Live/work: How old mill buildings shaped Providence’s 90s art renaissance

Providence prides itself on being a place of creativity, a place for artists, and a place for people from all over to enjoy the arts and culture that the city has to offer. But as housing costs have skyrocketed in the last few years, is it still an affordable place for artists to live and work? 

It was certainly much more affordable for artists in the 1990s, when Mayor Buddy Cianci was hyping Providence as the “Renaissance City.” One reason: artists were able to both live and work in the old mill buildings in the Olneyville and Valley neighborhoods.

“People were traveling from all over the world to come to this neighborhood to perform in that space”

One of the best-known artist spaces from that era? Fort Thunder. Taking up an entire floor of a building, there were 10-12 people living there at any given time, making art, music and hosting shows, performances and more. 

“Fort Thunder was a destination, not just nationally, but internationally,” said Michael Townsend, tape artist and one-time resident of Fort Thunder. “People were traveling from all over the world to come to this neighborhood to perform in that space.” 

Among Townsend’s roommates were the members of well-known noise band Lightning Bolt, who still perform to this day.  

“It was an active performance space and essentially, I always viewed it through the lens of just it being a factory,” Townsend said. “In that original building, you had machines churning, you know, every hour of the waking day producing goods that went all over the world. And here we were in the 1990s with a group of people in there industriously working and producing goods that were seen all over the world. And people came to that space to witness it in real time and be a part of it.”

Fort Thunder was just one of many such live/work artist spaces in an area that came to be known as Eagle Square, a cluster of old mill buildings that was once a center of industry. 

“Alco, U.S. Rubber, Nicholson File – industry was happening here that wasn’t happening anywhere else in the world,” said Townsend while leading a walking tour through the neighborhood. “We were the epicenter for cheap, well-made goods. And so when you see all these factories lined up along the river, know that for every single blank space you see, there was most likely a factory. Every parking lot you see, there was a building there.”

“Cheap, raw space to not just work, but to also live”

As industries changed and left the area, many of the mills were left empty. And that’s when the artists moved in, gradually starting in the 70s and 80s, culminating in the cultural boom of the 90s that led to spaces like Fort Thunder.

“If you’re willing to put up with there being no heat control, maybe a leaky roof, ad hoc electricity, ad hoc plumbing, you can have a space in this mill world and for very little money, have the space and time to work on your craft,” Townsend said of his time living at the Fort. “It is very attractive as a destination for people who are looking for cheap, raw space to not just work, but to also live.”

Townsend said he shared several thousand square feet with a few other people, and his share of the rent was $150 – equivalent to about $300 today. 

“Nobody really bothered you as long as you paid the rent”

Glenn Turner is a photographer who lived in the same building as Fort Thunder. 

“We had the whole end of the building,” he said. “There were double doors with a winch that opened up … was a huge space. You know, 15, 18-foot ceilings. I had probably a thousand square feet, with a dark room that I built.”

“It was a real laissez-faire atmosphere where you could pretty much do whatever you want and make whatever noise you wanted and nobody really bothered you as long as you paid the rent,” Turner said.

Xander Marro is one of the co-founders of The Dirt Palace, and she co-manages the Wedding Cake House – a combined artist residency and bed and breakfast on Westminster Street. In the 1990s, she lived in a former mill building.

“I think the ceilings were maybe 12-foot, three inches. And so if you stack three pieces of drywall, you only get up to 12 feet. So that’s where the drywall stopped,” Marro said. That meant that “every unit was connected by this sort of three inches across the top of each one, where you could sort of hear what was happening in every other space. And the guy who lived across the hall from me had a rooster at some point in time, so there was, you know, cock-a-doodle-doodling happening at all hours of the night.”

Xander shared the space with a few other artists. Altogether, they paid $700 a month for 5000 square feet. 

“It was like too much space, honestly,” she said. “There was just like a pile of stuff that people brought home from the trash in the living room.”

The rent was so low that an artist wouldn’t have to spend all of their time working. Many people had part-time jobs, or worked seasonally and then spent the rest of their time honing their craft. And living near other artists helped, too.

“I think what really interested people and what made it so compelling and so something that people, you know, in many ways built lives around, was how strong the community was,” Marro said.

And this was a community of artists. There’s no firm data from the period, but some people estimate that there were between 300 and 500 artists living and working in the greater Eagle Square area in the late 1990s. People saw each others’ works in progress, they heard each others’ bands practicing, they visited each others’ spaces.

But it didn’t last. When the Providence Place Mall was completed in 1999, developers started viewing the Eagle Square area as a place to potentially make some money. The old mill buildings and the artists who lived in them were in the way. A developer named Feldco put forward a plan to build a strip mall and parking lot in their place. 

Members of the community got together to try to stop the plan. In the end, some of the buildings were torn down and others were left in place. Some of the artists found nearby mill buildings to live and work in, but often faced eviction due to increased attention on the safety of old buildings in the wake of the Station Nightclub fire in 2003.

“If you don’t provide them an awesome reason to stay, they will go seek their fortunes elsewhere”

Today, the new construction where Fort Thunder used to be includes a Price Rite grocery store, an armed forces recruiting office and a parking lot. And while some of those old mill buildings remain standing, many have become home to pricey residential loft apartments – spaces that are no longer accessible to many of the artists that were part of creating the bohemian vision that draws many people to that loft style of living. 

Artist Michael Townsend says there are still a handful of exceptions in neighborhoods like Olneyville and Valley.

“This neighborhood is still full of artists’ studios. The spirit of making stuff still exists and that’s to be applauded. But all those artists are paying rent on spaces that they are not allowed to live in, and there are still artists who, especially younger artists who are at the beginning of their careers, who just need an incubator period of a couple of years,” Townsend said. 

“It is my personal belief that the best way to do it is through collaborative living, because then you are in a space where there’s a multitude of ideas and influences and you can grow as an artist much faster,” he said. “If you don’t provide them an awesome reason to stay, they will go seek their fortunes elsewhere.”

So what is available for artists now? Is live/work still possible in Providence? And why is it important to have affordable spaces for artists in the midst of a housing crisis? We’ll look at some of those issues for the next story in this two-part series, Live/Work.