Making Place from Pavement: Providence's WaterplaceBy Jane Holtz Kay Architect William Warner doesn't act like the Robert Moses of de-paving. With a wry wit, a self-effacing manner, and a devotion to urban detail, the architect of Providence's Waterplace Park doesn't appear to be a man who could part the asphalt. Nonetheless, his transformation of a half-mile swath of hardtop into a canal and walkway, has created not only what some call the "Venice of New England" but has shaped a model for asphalt removal and urban renewal in the nation. Last month, a generation after plans to re-engineer Providence began, Waterplace's success in stitching together this severed city prompted the launching of the Old Harbor Plan, Providence's final de-paving venture. The first phase of the $270-million, 10-year project, will complete waterway's final push to the sea, moving interstate-195 and freeing some 45 acres of downtown area and shore land for greater access, recreation and renewal. More than a triumph of architecture over asphalt in one New England city, Waterplace's string of lagoons embodies a national impulse to remove the concrete flatlands left by half a century of hardtopping. Today, as 1950's roads end their lifespan, Americans are refurbishing their waterfronts. Rivers once seen as prime candidates for highways could become locales for Downtowns seeking to restore rather than re-pave.
Add to these, the newly-pedestrianized Cleveland Flats and a Denver parks restoration that has pickaxed roads in three parks along the 10-mile South Platte River Project to preserve its corridor for open space and habitat. For a finale, visit the South Bronx where the Tri-State Transportation Campaign, Nos Quedamos/We Stay Committee and neighborhood activists are looking to decommission the little-used l.25 mile Sheridan Expressway and demolish 28 acres to expand and improve the vagrant 13-acre Bronx River waterfront park. For all these initiatives, Providence's before-and-after landscape can still claim the nation's most heroic and handsome makeover. A "before" shot of the city would scan a brutish landscape split in two: at its crest, would stand the palatial McKim, Mead and White marble state capitol; below, the dense and delightful downtown of brick. In between, would spread an impassable wall of rail, road and parking deposited by 1950's-style urban renewal. Dismayed by a massive early-'80s state plan that would have left the wall of roads still smothering the city, Warner acted to man the bulldozers in reverse. Seeing the possibilities beyond the plan, he crusaded to slice the concrete sea and realign and restore the Woonasquatucket and Moshassuck rivers. "Daylighting" is the phrase used by those who release creeks from culverts. But "city-making" would better describe the architect's labors. Using available transportation funds from the federal railway Northeast Corridor Project to improve the rails and federal highway (FHWA) moneys to re-connect the roads and unearth the river (strange grandparents!), the city metamorphosed. Mayor Vincent "Buddy" Cianci and two influential senators had their share of clout in the project. Earlier versions of his ideas floated in the air, but "it was his vision," says Edward Sanderson, executive director of the State Preservation Commission: his energy to seam the city and create the brick and cobblestone promenade, the amphitheaters, the resting places along the canal; his selectivity, political adeptness and commitment to "tend to his own garden," and not a well-groomed one at that, says Matt Arnn, executive director of the Waterfront Center. Walking or boating the canal's still waters and park, crossing under a portrait gallery of 12 bridges, surveying pavements and plantings copious enough to fill a kit of urban gardens, it is hard to envision the dreary landscape before Warner peeled off "the world's largest bridge" in this once-forsaken downtown. And on a rainy Earth day when the walkway's soggy pear trees looked down on an assembly of equally drenched waterfront advocates at the Waterfront Center Conference on "Parks, Pathways and Public Realm," these touring officials attested to both the new outlook and the draw of his results as they followed in Warner's wake. More than a ribbon of water, Waterplace is a tour de force: jampacked with stone and brick walls, intercepted and organized with steps, a restaurant, sheltering rotundas. The palette is large, the architect's way of design traditional, neither thinly de-constructed nor post-modern clunky. A potpourri of artifacts and street furniture curve along the river's path and connect to the urban streetscape at every link. Bridges and paths fan out into plazas before the Rhode Island School of Design or dissolve into the buildings of the city they straddle, connecting the esplanade to the town. "Porous," Warner calls the linkage. The longtime Providence architect handles the extremes of scale deftly, from the super-scale plan to the complex hand-sized details of bronze railing, a patterned brick bridge, ornate sewer covers or historic panels. With dry humor and attentiveness to details, he has deployed artistry and political adeptness to coaxing niceties of design from municipal authorities. It's "multi-modal," Warner says, referring to how the walkability of his work fits into new federal funding for means of transportation not commonly oriented to pedestrians. "William the Conqueror" is his nickname. Unlike most architects, Warner describes his 12-person office not as an "a & e" firm, i.e architecture and engineering--but as an "a & la" one--architecture and landscape architecture. Though minor complaints about maintenance problems are heard, spring daffodils dapple the banks in between the river grasses, weeping willows and oaks trace the banks, and the sensitivity to larger greenery and natural regional plantings shows. Beyond the finishes, Providence artists have made Waterplace park a gathering spot in summer months with "Water Fire," a frequent show of cloaked gondoliers in black mufti gliding silently from fire to fire, illuminating brazier after brazier to light the evening's dark. This spectacle and civic happening draws Providence's academic and blue collar constituency to the waterfront. Old Harbor Plan, designed to extend the waterway and enhance its edges for the last lapse to the harbor along an austere, industrial site of oddlot buildings including a power plant will have a more "earthy" look, says Warner. The "riprap" (sustaining rocks) along its banks will remain. A boardwalk will allow walkers to pass by and docks will encourage boats. A heritage museum is also in the works to accompany Warner's earlier addition to the power plant, a handsome structure with massive black ducts and well-composed glass windows emblazoned with red and green. Efforts to clean the polluted river and connect the city's poorer neighborhoods with a bike path will enable them to share the benefits and link to the larger region. While Warner seams together the Downtown and television's "Providence" gives the city cachet, the $435 million, l.3 million square foot Providence Place soon to open between the canal and the capitol adds less to the city's urbanity. Spanning a long city block, bigger than the Brown campus, this aloof shopping and entertainment complex turns inward, away from the urban core to its own so-called "Wintergarden." Wrapped with a massive 4000-car garage, this quintessential "urban" mall, along with three new downtown hotels and a convention center could drain customers from a beautiful but less-than-bustling Downtown. It threatens the vitality hard-brought by Waterplace and encouraged by plans for artist and residential housing Downtown. Indeed, this structure raises questions as to whether Providence can build on this walkable, public space as the city heats up and more conventional developers push for more enclosed, car-oriented modes. It also invites the larger question: can urban America use this opportunity for rolling back a hard-topped past judiciously? For the present, paving over the planet continues virtually unabated. Even as Kansas City, Missouri, enhances its handsome system of historic greenways, it expands its interstate through the city. While Lower Manhattan gets more access with a waterfront promenade; Trenton, New Jersey, succumbs to a retrograde road widening of route 29 by the water. De-pavers must run doubletime to outpace the road-motion machine. Nor does simply lifting asphalt produce utopian architecture. The Louisville park by landscape superstar George Hargreave is sterile. His formalistic art-on-paper performance--here a triangular "Parisian" park, there a waterfall, nowhere (hardly) a waterside seat--is cold and arbitrary, a far remove from Louisville's richly-textured Olmsted parks hewing to river and land. Still, if results vary, the impetus grows. The urge for green (or blue) relief made manifest in the last election when 240 communities placed open space issues on the ballot and more than two-thirds passed, reflects a new constituency for such initiatives. If sprawl to the fringes is their issue, re-constructing this kind of core is an answer. America's place-seekers and savers could learn from this providential de-paving. Originally published in New York Times Sunday Arts and Leisure, January 3, 1999.
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