Research & Learn
Overview
Since our founding in 1956, Providence Preservation Society has produced research about the city and its history through newsletters, publications, individual building and house histories, neighborhood surveys, and documentary photographs.
Antoinette Downing, one of PPS’s founders, wrote Early Homes of Rhode Island in 1937 with support from Brown University and Rhode Island School of Design. In 1952, she co-authored The Architectural Heritage of Newport, Rhode Island, 1640-1915 with the Yale University architectural historian Vincent Scully, which won the Society of Architectural Historians’ book award that year. Both books remain critical surveys of the early architecture of Rhode Island.
PPS has produced nearly 1,700 individual histories of buildings and landscapes in Providence, which are available for free in the Guide to Providence Architecture and the Mary A. Gowdey Library of House Histories (PPS is slowly working to combine these resources into one site). Most of the building entries in the Guide were published by the architectural historian William McKenzie Woodward in 2003, but PPS staff have added to and revised these entries over the years. It is used by 34,000 researchers every year. The Gowdey Library contains individual building histories dating from the 1960s to the 2000s that were produced by PPS staff and volunteers as part of the organization’s building marker program. The early histories tend to be shorter, at 1-2 pages with a focus on property ownership, while the later histories are longer and begin to include social and biographical information about people who lived and worked in these buildings.
PPS’s Architectural Slide Collection contains hundreds of documentary photographs of buildings and homes in the city from the 1950s to 1990s. They were digitized in 2018 with grants from Historic New England and the Herman H. Rose Fund. Properties are arranged alphabetically by street name; the collection includes the full range of building types in Providence, including single-family homes, triple-deckers, mills and schools in all of the city’s neighborhoods.
Our YouTube Channel contains close to 100 videos of PPS presentations, symposia and meetings from 2014 to the present.
How-To Research Guides
How to Research a Providence Building’s History, William MacKenzie Woodward
Researching Your House History at City Hall, Providence City Archives Staff with Carole Pace and Katherine Cavanaugh
Additional Databases
Providence’s Recent Past (2010): A Story Map with brief building histories dating from the 1950s through the 2000s written and compiled by Ned Connors.
PPS/AIA Industrial Commercial Buildings Survey (2001-2002): List of 207 properties, including Providence’s mills, warehouses, and other industrial and commercial properties.
Industrial and Commercial Buildings Survey (2001-02): Includes brief narratives about all of the buildings listed in the Providence Landmarks District, a noncontiguous local historic district. The survey was published in two volumes alphabetically: Volume I lists properties on Aborn to Grove Street and Volume II lists properties on Harris Avenue to Wilson Street.
Providence Public Library Digital Collections
City and State Databases
Assessor’s Database for the City of Providence
Rhode Island Historic Property Search: database that my be used to search for properties listed or evaluated for listing on the National Register of Historic Places.