2025 Most Endangered Places

Every year, Providence Preservation Society (PPS) invites community members to nominate places to its annual Most Endangered Places (MEP) List to bring attention to vulnerable places and pressure points across the city that are of architectural, historic, or cultural significance to their communities.

2025 Most Endangered Places List


02908 between Smith and Admiral Streets

Katy Pickens

Neighborhoods around Providence College: Elmhurst, Smith Hill, and parts of Wanskuck 

Threat: Gentrification, displacement, demolition

Historic District or Landmark Status: This neighborhood includes the Oakland Avenue National Historic District (designated 1984).

Listed on MEP: 2024.

Over the last twenty years, rapid redevelopment in the Elmhurst, Smith Hill and Wanskuck neighborhoods abutting Providence College has turned the 02908 zip code between Smith and Admiral Streets into a hotbed of investor-owned housing that caters to students. A 2025 map created by PPS reveals the scale of institutional ownership in these neighborhoods, showing that 258 parcels in the immediate vicinity of the campus are now owned by a handful of landlords and developers.  

In the fall of 2024, Providence College (PC) had a student body of 4,494 undergraduate students, but on-campus dorms to house a little over 3,200 students, leaving close to a thousand students to find housing in the surrounding area. Between 2012 and 2024, PC built ten new academic and recreational buildings and only one dormitory (however, they also demolished a dorm during this period). Their most recent Master Plan envisions one new residence hall. Anecdotal reports also suggest that not all of the students living in this area are PC students, rather some attend other colleges in the city.    

Block-long stretches of some streets — including Eaton Street, Pinehurst Avenue, Pembroke Avenue, Liege Street, and Oakland Avenue — are entirely or almost entirely owned by investors. On a cluster of two streets in Wanskuck – Liege Street and Venice Street, located on the eastern border of PC’s campus – four permits for the demolition of single-family homes within steps of each other were approved in 2023 and 2024, three of which were submitted by the same company. 

The nine real estate companies that own the 258 parcels that were mapped include The 02908 Club and Amicus Properties (132), Strive (69), Green Light Investment LLC (11), D&D Realty Management LLC (13), Big Dreamz LLC (9), Veritas Holding LLC (3), Sheldon E. Schwartz (10), SHA Investments LLC (5), and Federal Hill Capital LLC (6).

All of the streets impacted by the wave of redevelopment and targeted demolition are in Rhode Island Health Equity Zones, and most of them are in a Justice40 tract, which identifies them by the federal government as an under-resourced neighborhood. About thirty of the homes are part of the Oakland Avenue National Historic District, designated in 1984, with two- and three-family homes dating between 1890 and 1930.

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, when Providence’s population was booming, these neighborhoods provided affordable housing options in two- and three-family homes, many of them triple-deckers. While in most cases, the original structures remain, the generational communities that made lives here are being displaced rapidly. Some states are considering measures to limit investor ownership of housing to address the housing affordability crisis in contexts like this, of hyper-local real estate monopolies.  

PPS Action Items in 2025: 

  • Continue to report on and map the rapid redevelopment and encroachment of investor ownership of the neighborhoods surrounding PC, as well as PC’s action or inaction, to inform the public and concerned community members of the extent of student-driven housing pressure in 02908 and its impacts on long-time residents.  
  • Add new research about the neighborhoods impacted by this targeted redevelopment to PPS’s online Guide to Providence Architecture to better inform the public and community members about the history and cultural vitality of these 19th- and early 20th-century neighborhoods.
  • Advocate for policies that target this scale of investor ownership of Providence’s housing stock in order to curb the rise in rents in these areas, support first-time home buyers, and limit hyper-local real estate monopolies.   

Atlantic Mills

Keating Zelenke

118 Manton Avenue

Neighborhood: Olneyville

Threat: Displacement, gentrification and neglect

Historic District or Landmark Status: Listed in the Industrial and Commercial Buildings District, City of Providence (designated 2001).

Listed on MEP: 2009, 2010, 2014-2017, 2024

Atlantic Mills was nominated by 14 people. Excerpts from some of the nominations follow.

Atlantic Mills is “the heartbeat of Providence.” 

“This is one of the last remaining affordable spaces for creators to work in.”

“I’ve been coming here since I was a child, back when the flea market was one of the only places my mom, an immigrant and single mother, could afford to take us. Growing up in poverty, this space was where I could find affordable movies, music, clothes, food — things that were out of reach elsewhere. Even today, it remains a vital hub for so many people, offering an affordable place to shop and gather, a true third space in the community. The organization I volunteer and chair for hosts everything from community baby showers to cake decorating classes for kids, adult literacy courses, and immigration services. There are fewer and fewer affordable, public spaces like this in the city where people can hold events or even just attend them. We see firsthand the need that exists here. It feels like this is one of the last places in the city that hasn’t been pushing us out — until now. I feel that this space is endangered because we’ve seen a pattern of development in the city where affordable, community-centered spaces are being replaced by luxury housing or businesses that cater to higher-income people. Atlantic Mills is one of the last places in Providence that truly serves low-income families, immigrants, and working-class people. There has been no clear communication or transparency from the developers about their plans, which only fuels concerns that the same thing could happen here — pricing out the very people who rely on this space the most. If we lose Atlantic Mills, we lose not just a marketplace, but a lifeline for so many in our community.” 

“I’ve known so many artists, makers, and creators who have lit up the city who live here. People who genuinely love Olneyville for what it is and grind to make it better – not sell it out. It’s been there my entire childhood. It’s a grounding force in the city.”

‘The building is potentially being sold, which if it happens, will increase rent and price out a lot of smaller nonprofits and artists and maker spaces…This space is a central location that residents have grown to trust and rely upon, the work that low-funded nonprofits do out it it is critical for low income neighbors and especially those who may not be citizens. ONA provides a vast array of resources and assistance to people who may not be able to access it elsewhere. Losing this affordable space would have a ripple effect across the community, as people lose a trusted source of information, support, and sense of belonging.” 

The Atlantic Mills complex has attracted artists, makers, small, and micro businesses with affordable rents for large spaces for 70 years. Although it doesn’t have all of the outward attributes of a Jewelry District “innovation hub,” Atlantic Mills is, in fact, a significant economic development incubator and cultural center. The complex is home to the Big Top Flea Market, an Olneyville community staple that brings hundreds of visitors to the Mills every weekend. In addition to the market, there is also a church, several artist collectives, multiple (and massive) furniture stores, a dog kennel, a forge, carpentry studios, and a computer museum. The Olneyville Neighborhood Association is a long-standing tenant and runs critical community programs out of the Mills. It is estimated to be about 88% occupied.

Atlantic Mills consists of a complex of three- and four-story buildings constructed along Manton Avenue and surrounding streets between 1852 and 1899. The central building, which is noted for its two domed towers, was built in 1871 and 1882. The Atlantic Delaine company was founded by General C.T. James in 1851 to manufacture wool muslin (called delaine). By the late 1880’s with 2,100 workers, this was the largest textile mill in Providence, and it continued to manufacture textiles until 1953. 

Atlantic Mills is listed in the City’s Industrial and Commercial Buildings District, which was established in 2001, and consists of a group of about 340 historic properties that are scattered throughout the city. This affords the Mills protection from demolition, major alterations or large additions without the review of the City’s Historic District Commission, so it is unlikely that the structures will be torn down or substantially changed, but tenants and members of the community fear that the new owner will increase rents, evict current tenants, and turn this scrappy economic and cultural hub into luxury housing (see so much of the mill redevelopment in Providence over the last 30 years).  

This listing recognizes that preserving our architectural heritage is an important part of what PPS does, but so is working to keep the communities intact and in place who steward these older buildings — who care for, maintain and inhabit them for long stretches when markets deem them unworthy. As many Mill tenants have testified, losing the Mills to luxury housing will put into jeopardy Providence’s claim to be a “cultural capital,” as artists, designers, makers and small business owners need affordable work space to thrive.    

PPS Action Items in 2025:

  • Continue to cover the new Atlantic Mills Tenant Union and any plans that emerge for the Mills’ redevelopment to inform the public and share opportunities to support the tenants and the Union. 
  • Advocate for an equitable redevelopment plan that includes the tenants and Olneyville community members as central participants.
  • Produce an online exhibition on Atlantic Mills for PPS’s online Guide to Providence Architecture that documents the Mills community today and includes short essays on its history and future.
  • Convene a Fall 2025 symposium on mill redevelopment in Providence over the last 25 years, with Eagle Square and Atlantic Mills as bookend projects.

The Cranston Street Armory

Courtesy Library of Congress

340 Cranston Street

Neighborhood: West End

Threat: Vacancy, deferred maintenance

Historic District or Landmark Status: Broadway-Armory National Historic District (designated 1974); Armory Local Historic District (designated 1989).

Listed on MEP: 1996-2000, 2003, 2015-2017, 2024

“It is the community’s castle, yet there might as well be a moat around it as the people have been largely kept out since it was vacated in 1997. Governor McKee terminated a reuse agreement with developer Scout that had been selected through one of the state’s most inclusive community processes. Then he wasted $80,000 on a consultant that produced a report to denigrate Scout’s proposal because the Governor was embarrassed by his own employees’ bad behavior. As a result, this nationally recognized landmark quality building is being punished, left vacant with little to no maintenance. The building will have to wait out yet another Governor but please keep it listed so that it remains a priority until that time that yet another reuse process can begin.”  

Since Governor McKee terminated a redevelopment contract with Scout Ltd. in the summer of 2023, no new plans have been established to redevelop or maintain the building, adding to tens of millions of dollars of deferred maintenance costs. While the state has proposed transferring ownership of the landmark to the City, ownership has not changed hands and the building remains vacant and in limbo. Scout’s 2020 redevelopment plan envisioned office, retail, and recreational use in the 200,000-square-foot facility and grew out of a years-long community visioning process. To imagine what it might have looked and felt like, we can look to Scout’s successful redevelopment of a 340,000 square-foot shuttered vocational high school in South Philadelphia, begun in 2014, which is now home to more than 170 small businesses (73% of them live in the neighborhood and more than half are women). The project has since won awards from the Congress for New Urbanism, the Urban Land Institute, and Dezeen. 

As Cranston Street Armory gathers dust, other cities are finding ways to equitably redevelop their armories, turning them into housing (some specifically for veterans), community and senior centers, food halls, public buildings, or, in the case of Kingsbridge Armory in the Northwest Bronx, a multi-use community hub with youth sports fields, cultural, and commercial spaces, community and event space with capacity for 13k (college graduations!), and an educational facility focused on workforce development. These are not easy projects, but they can be done. Just up the road, the City of New Bedford is close to soliciting redevelopment plans for its armory — to get there, the state undertook about $4 million worth of structural repairs, then sold it to the City for $10. That’s what city-state partnership looks like.     

The Cranston Street Armory was built in 1907 to house the Rhode Island National Guard. Designed by the local architectural firm William R. Walker & Son, the distinctive castle-like building has served as a resource and symbol of neighborhood identity for decades and is the namesake of the Armory District. From 1909 to 1981, the building was known as the Providence Civic Center and hosted a wide variety of events, including track meets, boxing matches, circuses, auto shows, inaugural balls, and political rallies. When the Civic Center closed due to structural problems, Rhode Island’s National Guard moved back into the building, moving out in 1996.

Due to its local as an architectural landmark and civic and community hub, the Cranston Street Armory was listed as one of America’s Most Endangered Sites in 1998 by the National Trust for Historic Preservation, and it has now appeared on PPS’ MEP list ten times over the last twenty-seven years, most recently in 2024. Let’s make this the last year that it’s an MEP headliner. As State Rep Enrique Sanchez said recently, “We need to figure out what we’re going to do with the Cranston Armory in Providence Rhode Island. It should be a top priority for 2025.”  

PPS Action Items in 2025: 

  • Continue to report on the status of the Armory and redevelopment efforts to inform the public and keep a public spotlight on progress – or lack thereof.  
  • Continue to curate public programs and events that support equitable redevelopment efforts, bringing speakers to Providence who have led such projects in other cities and organizing walks and tours.
  • Continue to support city, state and neighborhood efforts to turn the Armory into a community hub.     

Privately Owned Public Spaces 

Keating Zelenke

Collier Point Park (1996)

Neighborhood: Henderson Street, off Allens Avenue; Upper South Providence

Threats: Unilateral restrictions on use and access; inadequate maintenance or public interest planning.

Historic District or Landmark Status: None.   

Collier Point Park is a privately owned 6-acre public park with waterfront access. Designed in 1996 by William Warner Architects, it is one of only a few coastal rights-of-way access points in South Providence. The private owners of the park, Lotus Infrastructure Partners — a private equity investment firm based in Greenwich, CT — closed it down for a few months in 2024 after it was reportedly vandalized.  

Though it has since reopened, the closure highlighted the park’s precarious position as a privately owned public space (known as POPS in the planning world), which can suffer from restrictions on access, exclusionary surveillance/policing, and deferred maintenance. The firm that owns the park doesn’t need to be as transparent about its plans for the park as the City needs to be and is not beholden to community members. When the park closed down temporarily, Lotus did not alert the Washington Park Neighborhood Association and did not respond to our requests for comment about the closure or any future plans – because they don’t have to.  The Plant Manager at the Manchester Street Power Station reported to PPS that he makes decisions about the park’s closure with city officials and Lotus Infrastructure leadership but he said he was not at liberty to give us the name of the staff at Lotus who make the final call.   

Warner designed the small park in 1996 as part of his renovation of the Manchester Street Generating Station, on an adjoining parcel. He is generally recognized as one of Rhode Island’s most significant modern architects for projects including the Gordon School (1963) and Waterplace Park (1981-1994). He is also a key part of PPS’s own history as he led the 1959 College Hill development plan, which laid the groundwork for the College Hill Historic District.  Warner received an Honor Award from the American Institute of Architects in 1965, a Presidential Design Achievement Award from Bill Clinton in 1997, and was inducted into the Rhode Island Hall of Fame in 2004 before his passing in 2012. 

Collier Point Park is a significant Providence asset with potential to better serve South Providence and city-wide communities. Nearly 30 years after it first opened to the public, it may be time to renegotiate the terms of community “access,” providing community members with more say in its stewardship and its future.

Note: The small privately-owned plaza at One Financial Plaza managed by CBRE was also nominated this year due to the lack of maintenance on the Howard Ben Tré-designed fountain, which has been defunct for years (originally designed in 1998). The Boston Planning Department maintains a searchable partial map of the city’s POPS, while Cambridge’s Redevelopment Authority posts signs at many POPS to make public access and use policies more transparent. 

 PPS Action Items in 2025:

  • Monitor and report on Collier Point Park’s accessibility, and support the plan underway to create more visible and welcoming public signage on Allens Avenue.
  • Add and update entries on projects designed by William Warner and Howard Ben Tré in PPS’s online Guide to Providence Architecture to better inform the public and researchers about their significant body of work.  
  • Advocate for the creation and maintenance of a searchable map of Providence’s POPS to make these spaces more accessible and inclusive and their owners more accountable to the public.   

11 Higgins Avenue (John Hope Settlement House property)

Keating Zelenke

Neighborhood: Elmhurst

Historic District or Landmark Status: Not in a local or a national historic district, but is two blocks away from Smith Hill’s Oakland Avenue National Historic District.  

Threat: Vacancy, Neglect


“John Hope Boy’s Group Home in Providence was the home to many boys who were provided a supportive residential environment for young boys in need of temporary housing and care. With a focus on fostering a sense of community and stability, the group home offered a safe space for boys to grow and thrive under the guidance of dedicated staff members. … [Now] It has been forgotten. Longtime neglect and lack of repairs resulting from interior water damage and black mold. Board of Directors has been neglectful in their duties to preserve this building.”

According to PPS’s records, this 8-bedroom Queen Anne-style home was built by Tobias Burke in 1893, likely remodeled between 1895 and 1908, and moved to its present site in 1928, a block away from Nathanael Greene Middle School. Homeowners over the last hundred years include Anthony Kubelis, a “watchman,” and his wife Margaret (1930-1938), Barney and Ida Buckler (1939-1945), and Alfrede and Civita Tessitore (1945-1969), from Campania, Italy. Coincidentally, 11 Higgins was also owned for one year (1938-1939) by the Industrial Trust Company, whose headquarters, colloquially known as the “Superman” building, is also on the MEP List this year. 

For about the last ten years, 11 Higgins has been vacant. The John Hope Settlement House (JHSH) owns the home and operated a group shelter for at-risk young men aged 18-24 there, but closed the shelter and hasn’t established a plan for its future use despite community advocacy. At a 2014 rally outside of the house, Providence activist Kobi Dennis and others called on JHSH to come up with a new plan for the building that benefits the community, but 11 Higgins remains dark.  

JHSH has been a pillar of the Black community in Providence since the late 1920s. Prior to the Civil Rights movement, it was one of the city’s only community centers that catered to people of color, specifically African Americans. However, in the last several years, the organization has faced challenges and has drastically reduced its programming, with some community members suggesting that there has been financial mismanagement. The nonprofit may be on stronger footing this year, however, as a new Executive Director, Dr. Robyn Frye, came onboard in October of 2024. 

“The 11 Higgins property is a very important part of the John Hope Settlement House story and we are being very strategic and intentional in our planning concerning this property,” Dr. Frye said in a statement to PPS. During an interview, she shared plans to restore and renovate both 11 Higgins and the main JHSH building at 7 Thomas P. Whitten Way. Such changes would be welcome news for JHSH and West End and Elmhurst community members, who see potential for this historic home to serve as affordable or transitional housing.  

Restoration of the main JHSH building in the West End, which houses their offices, as well as their daycare and after school programs, is already underway. The organization got started on necessary repairs to the roof last summer, and has continued to renovate their daycare classrooms. But with two buildings to restore and limited funds, it will take an extraordinary effort to get this beautiful 8-bedroom historic home in good enough shape to once again serve the community. 

PPS Action Item in 2025:

  • Support the adaptive reuse and restoration of this significant Providence home in partnership with JHSH leadership and community leaders to return this beautiful building back to serving the community.

The Industrial Trust “Superman” Building

Keating Zelenke

111 Westminster Street

Neighborhood: Downtown 

Threat: Vacancy, uncertain redevelopment 

Historic District or Landmark Status: Located in the Downtown Providence National Historic District (designated 1984)

Listed on MEP: 2014-2024

When redevelopment of the building finally began in 2022, it had been vacant for nine years. Two years after the start of the process, improvements to the structure have come along in baby steps, not leaps and bounds. 

The developer, High Rock Westminster LLC, is seeking additional public financial support to complete the project as construction prices have risen so rapidly over the last few years, and as a result, construction progress has slowed to an agonizing pace. Their plan to transform the building into hundreds of apartments — 20% of which would be reserved for affordable and workforce housing — is much needed as the city grapples with an increasingly serious housing crisis.   

While the developers and Mayor Smiley have not disclosed to the public exactly how much will be needed to get the building “over the finish line,” Smiley did concede to the Boston Globe that it is over $10 million. After hundreds of millions of dollars of investment into the building over the last several years, fatigue is setting in for the taxpayers of Rhode Island. In a PBN poll from earlier this year, roughly 45% of respondents said they didn’t feel any more state funds should go towards redeveloping the site. 

This 1928 Art Deco-style skyscraper was built by the New York City-based architectural firm Walker & Gillette. Affectionately known as the Superman Building for its passing resemblance to the fictional Daily Planet building, it has been the keystone of Providence’s skyline and Rhode Island’s tallest building for almost a century. In addition to PPS’s Most Endangered Places list for the last 10 years, the Superman Building also appeared on the National Trust’s list of the 11 Most Endangered Historic Places in 2019.  High Rock did not respond to a request for comment on the status of the project, but David Salvatore, the new Executive Director of the Providence Foundation, said that saving Superman is the Foundation’s number one priority this year. 

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