The Providence Preservation Society and the West Broadway Neighborhood Association convene a tour of the largely abandoned Cranston Street Armory

From the chipped radiators in the Cranston Street Armory’s cavernous drill hall, hot air ekes out slowly. For such tall ceilings, it doesn’t echo much inside. The massive room devours what little light streams in through the small, arched windows on the walls, organized in sets of three.

Once upon a time, the hall would have been filled with the thunderous pounding of boots on the hardwood floors, now coated in a thick layer of dust, as National Guard soldiers performed military exercises. It also, at one point, would have been filled with the music of wedding bands. At another, the booming voices of politicians announcing their campaigns. 

Now, the 45 of us standing in the white, slanted light from the windows probably comprise one of the largest groups that’s been inside the Armory for the last year. As we wander through the maze-like corridors on the first floor and in the basement, the empty rooms serve as a stark reminder of the building’s potential.

The stately Cranston Street Armory, built in 1907, has been utilized sporadically since the National Guard moved out in 1996. In 2015, the drill hall was washed in the glow of blue and purple party lights for former Mayor Jorge Elorza’s inaugural ball. In late 2022, the yellow brick building was used as a warming shelter, serving roughly 150 individuals each night during the winter months of that year. And as we weaved through the hallways and former offices, the remnants of the building’s stint as a movie studio are scattered around for us to see: a sign that reads “CREW ONLY,”; a gingham couch where production assistants and directors may have sat; a Raggedy Ann doll left behind, overlooking one room from a high ledge. 

Despite its occasional use, often for only a handful of months at a time, the iconic landmark has been largely vacant for nearly the last 30 years, much to the chagrin of the residents of the surrounding community. 

“It is the community’s castle, yet there might as well be a moat around it,” Kari Lang, the former executive director of the West Broadway Neighborhood Association (WBNA), wrote when she submitted the property for this year’s Most Endangered Places list. The Cranston Street Armory has made PPS’s MEP list time and time again — 11 times including the most recent list, published last week. 

Following the release of the 2025 MEP List, PPS and the WBNA worked together to assemble a tour of the building for stakeholders. On Jan. 23, a group of politicians, preservationists, artists, developers, community organizers, historians, and West End community members stood in the surprisingly warm belly of Cranston Street Armory to answer some questions: How did we get here, and how can we move forward?

The visit was supervised by members of the State Division of Capital Asset Management and Maintenance — the property is owned by the state, and DCAMM acts as the landlord. 

Local author and historian Taylor Polites gave historical context to tour attendees. At the start of the tour, he explained that post-Civil War industrialization was accompanied by a nationwide wave of labor unrest. As a response to this sometimes violent activism, armories began popping up across the country during the late-19th and early-20th centuries. 

“The construction of new, modern armories for volunteer militias calmed the anxieties of urban dwellers about social order,” Polites wrote in a small booklet about the building’s history that he passed around during the tour. Armories were not only physical centers that housed the National Guard troops who could be called in to quell potential civic unrest — these “grand and authoritarian” buildings were also an imposing symbol of government power and control, literally casting a shadow over the people in their midst. 

Many of the tour’s attendees had never been inside of the historic building. Necks craned upwards to take in the full height of the drill hall ceiling, and feet scuttled along the blue and gray rugs inside the former offices in the two headhouses of the structure. For having been vacant as long as it has, the building was in surprisingly good condition — at least the first floor and basement were. There were some signs of basic deterioration, things like peeling paint, some lifting baseboards, and decades-worth of grime, but the only real damage glimpsed by the visitors was a section of the drywall ceiling that had fallen down in the ballroom. Some sections of the wooden ceiling in the basement appeared to have been recently repaired or replaced.

After the tour, the stakeholders filed out of the Armory doors and piled into their cars — having reminded themselves what the inside of the building looked like, it was time to discuss the future.

The Scout Situation: How the last Armory proposal fell apart

Over Dunkin’ coffee and pastries from Seven Stars Bakery, everyone sat shoulder-to-shoulder in the packed garage of the WBNA’s headquarters to discuss the first question of the morning: How did we get here?

The most recent community effort to redevelop the Armory came only a couple of years ago. In 2018, Utile Design, with offices in Providence and Boston, worked with the State of Rhode Island to assess the upgrades necessary to bring the building up to modern fire codes. They also reached out to the surrounding community for their input on future uses for the building. 

After Utile submitted their report, which included a plan to install elevators, new stairwells, additional bathrooms, and an ADA-accessible entrance, the State put out a request for proposals. Though they had not implemented the updates outlined by the design firm, the State was pumping “about $100,000 per month” into repointing the building so it was structurally sound, according to Tim Love, a Utile principal.

The winning proposal came from the Philadelphia-based design-development firm Scout Ltd. According to members of the project’s steering committee, they were the perfect fit. Previous projects of theirs include the transformation of the 340,000-square-foot Bok building in South Philadelphia from a vocational high school to a community makerspace and an entrepreneurial hub. Scout is also the firm behind the adaptive reuse of Providence’s own 50 Sims Avenue in the Valley neighborhood and the Dye House in Olneyville. They had worked on historic buildings twice the size of the Cranston Street Armory, and their commitment to community engagement was real.

However, a confluence of factors during and after the COVID-19 pandemic doomed the State’s partnership with Scout and the $56 million dollar revitalization plan. The State’s point-person on the project, Carole Cornelison, unfortunately passed away and former Governor Gina Raimondo left Providence for Washington D.C. Perhaps most salaciously, David Patten — the former head of DCAMM— allegedly acted inappropriately towards Scout employees during a day trip to Philadelphia. The Rhode Island Ethics Commission fined Patten for soliciting personal gifts from the company in exchange for his support of their project. Scout employees also alleged that he made racist and sexist comments during his visit, though those complaints fall outside of the Ethics Committee’s jurisdiction. (Patten’s lawyer claims his behavior came as a result of a “medical crisis.”) All of these moving pieces contributed to Governor Dan McKee’s decision to terminate the State’s deal with Scout in 2023.

Roughly a year and a half later, Armory plans have stagnated. Despite the blistering cold in late 2024 and early 2025, the State declined to reopen its doors as a warming shelter as it had in the past. Governor McKee has been negotiating with Mayor Brett Smiley’s office about transferring the property to the city since mid-2023, but no change in ownership has been made yet. Without money from the State — Smiley was asking for $45 million over the course of three years — the City will likely be unable to fund the necessary improvements to the building. 

Finding hope for the future in Kingsbridge

Along for the tour was Sandra Lobo, of the Northwest Bronx Community & Clergy Coalition (NWBCCC). The NWBCCC has been fighting a very similar fight for redevelopment of the Kingsbridge Armory for the last 30 years. Said to be the largest armory in the world, Kingsbridge is more than three times the size of the Cranston Street Armory and has been vacant for just as long. Having toured through our armory, she relayed how well maintained it seemed compared to her neighborhood’s armory in the Bronx. 

“We’ll send you three of our organizers and we’ll get this done in a few months,” she said excitedly. Through her eyes, redevelopment of the Cranston Street Armory is well within reach. 

Lobo presented the NWBCCC’s history of organizing around the Kingsbridge Armory at the stakeholder meeting and at PPS’s Annual Meeting the night before. The NWBCCC’s vision for Kingsbridge was based on four pillars: union jobs, community ownership, anti-displacement, and environmental and economic sustainability. Instead of going the traditional route of finding a developer to finance the project and function as a landlord afterwards, their goal was to build a coalition of community organizations beholden to the people of the Bronx, who would funnel revenue back into the surrounding neighborhood.

The New York City Economic Development Corporation, a municipal agency, put out a request for proposals for the redevelopment of the Kingsbridge Armory in September of 2023. The NWBCCC submitted a proposal, but they found out in early January that theirs was not selected — another proposal was, but they will continue to work with the developers as the project takes shape. There are a great deal of lessons to be gleaned from their efforts.

Before the request for proposals was announced, Lobo spent nine months working with the city government on their Together for Kingsbridge community engagement campaign. Their efforts reportedly reached roughly 4,000 community members, 1,000 of whom directly participated in public workshops. During the process, which included about 13 hours of public meetings and workshops, over 500 community members toured Kingsbridge, and close to 1,000 surveys were completed. It was particularly important to the community working group that young people were given the opportunity to share their thoughts; students from a variety of schools in the surrounding area — from elementary students to high schoolers — were given a tour and asked to imagine a future for the building.

During her presentation at the WBNA, Lobo also listed other strategies for engaging the community, including hiring a full-time organizer and collaborating with faith leaders to engage their congregations.  

Lobo was not able to share the specifics of their proposal with us during her presentation because the City issued a gag order in perpetuity to everyone in the running. However, a feature story published in the New York Times in early 2024 obtained some of the details. In the NWBCCC’s $1 billion proposal, the largest chunk of the 500,000-square-foot structure was designated for “light industry” which would create long-term, high-paying jobs. In the drill hall, they envisioned a large concert venue with space for 5,000-30,000 people. Around 20,000 square feet would go to a food hall with a “commercial kitchen and commissary,” as well as smaller stalls for food and craft vendors. A second phase of their project involved construction of 200 affordable housing units in a set of buildings adjacent to the main armory. 

Though their idea was not selected for development, NWBCCC remains committed to standing up for their community. They have every intention of continuing to make their voices heard, and to hold the winning developer, El Centro Kingsbridge, accountable to the community. In 2009, NWBCCC rallied the community to shut down an earlier proposal for Kingsbridge: a big-box mall that would have brought profits to rich brands while supplying poverty-wage jobs to the neighborhood. 

“They [NYCEDC] know we can do it again,” Lobo said.

The Cranston Street Armory is not as big as the Kingsbridge Armory, limiting some of its potential uses, but its smaller scale is also a blessing — as underscored by Lobo, this is a much more manageable project. It could be a small business hub, artist studios, indoor recreational courts, or a venue space for concerts and graduations. It could be a site for state offices or city archives, or affordable housing. And while it’s tempting to say that it could be anything but what it is now — an old castle collecting dust — the Kingsbridge Armory encourages us to pause. Nestled on one edge of one of the poorest neighborhoods in our city, the Cranston Street Armory should be utilized in a thoughtful way. How can we center economic equity? How can we get young people involved in reimagining the property? How can we ensure that the benefits of our own armory stay within our community?

By Keating Zelenke / Mary A. Gowdey Special Projects Fellow / kzelenke@ppsri.org

Missed the tour? KITE Architects took these 360 photos of the building while working with Scout Ltd. on their research and proposal. Click the links below to navigate through the building.

Basement: https://www.klapty.com/tour/COx0rZMpdG

Drill Hall: https://www.klapty.com/tour/e6b0tlmwqI

Second Floor: https://www.klapty.com/tour/ePD0UQJrwu

Third Floor: https://www.klapty.com/tour/ePt0XnslGJ

Fourth Floor: https://www.klapty.com/tour/ePn0ko3HDp