Providence, R.I.: A charming place to experience history

By Christine Tibbetts

Stretching out on a lush lawn, elm trees and blue sky overhead, listening to music. Grounds for a vacation.

The holiday’s even finer when the lawn is attached to a 1788 house in Providence, R.I., with a 50-piece orchestra organized in 1837 that I lucked into one June evening.

History mixes with modern all over this New England capital city and every bit is pleasant.

Just the view across the street from the John Brown house where summer concerts happen connects travelers of all ages with families from three centuries ago.

This neighborhood is all about houses -- modest and oversized -- built in the 1700s. Today some are offices, some rentals for college and university students and others are home for people lucky enough to live in Providence full-time.

Lucky for certain if they like good food, and lucky if they can’t get their fill of art in every dimension.

Johnson & Wales, the culinary university, is here, so chefs galore graduate and open restaurants; food scholars and famous chefs come to study and teach and the Culinary Arts Museum presents ever-changing exhibits to whet a visitor’s appetite even further.

Rhode Island School of Design is here too (if you’re in the know you say Riz-Dee) with an astounding 84,000 art and design objects in its museum collection.

The birthing of America is evident all around Providence, beginning with founder Roger Williams and tributes to his passion for freedom of conscience.

Civil law he approved, but not regulations controlling worship. The new colony he saw as “many a hundred souls in one ship.”

Those souls included the Wampanoag and Narragansett Indians and Williams defended their rights, published a language and culture guide and served as a diplomat helping Europeans understand the first settlers.

He also shared in the start up of America’s first Baptist Church. That was 1638. People worship and wed there today, and tourists can visit for $1, or $2 with a guide.

Old and new, always mixing. Being in Providence is living history because youíre always in or looking at centuries-old places while doing new things.

Walking tours with the Rhode Island Historical Society tell lively people stories. Good to get out of cars and into yards. Mid-June to mid-October is the season.

I did a houses and history mile on Benefit Street but there are lots of walking topics — gardens, dining, literary, art, rivers, downtown architecture, women’s history, even a sunrise stroll.

Benefit Street is a mile of early America: wood frame homes, churches, libraries. Docent Rosemary Donahue knows about the original residents and what they did, including trade with China in the early 1800s.

She also knows which houses still have descendents of the originals living there. Continuity in this city.

Brown University brings 6,000 undergrads to Providence and the ones who take American studies do so in a handsome yellow house on Benefit Street with gardens created by landscape designer Frederick Law Olmstedís firm in 1890.

The John Nicholas and Ann Brown family members lived here from 1814-1985 and then gave the building to Brown. A hand-crafted nine-shell mahogany desk was sold for $12.1 million to help with restoration costs.

Furniture has a long local history in Providence. Check out these woodworking names before you go — Carlile, Goddard, Townsend, Rawson — and you’ll recognize their furniture-building style in the John Brown house, the Gov. Henry Lippitt House, Pendleton House at RISD and other historic homes open for tours.

Goddard was a Newport cabinetmaker and today’s design experts like to analyze the differences in the Providence work. Convex shells were carved from the furniture piece itself by Providence artisans for nine-shell block front desk and bookcase pieces, but added on in Newport, they say.

Silver and jewelry built this city too, the home of Gorham Manufacturing Company from 1831 until it closed a few years ago. The collection at the RISD Museum is considered the largest Gorham anywhere and holds amazing pieces like the lady’s writing table and a decorative centerpiece created for the 1876 Philadelphia Centennial Exhibition, part of a 740-piece silver dining service all in the Museum’s collection.

Founded in 1877, the Rhode Island School of Design was needed to train silversmiths notes Matthew Montgomery, director of marketing for the Museum of Art.

Johnson & Wales Culinary University was founded in 1914 and I’m guessing that was to give visitors like me so many restaurant choices I had to skip sightseeing to choose yet another fine meal.

Happily, CAV gave me both. Sylvia Moubayed calls her place in the Jewelry District CAV — Cocktails, Antiques, Victuals — and says she has cooks for the hurrying lunch crowd and chefs for evening fine dining.

Either way you get an eyeful too with Kilim handwoven textiles, 16th, 17th and 18th African and Asian ceremonial sculpture, 13-foot high ash wood ceilings, brick walls and an 1880s wooden bar on which O. Henry wrote “Gift of the Magi” when it was at Pete’s Tavern in New York.

Moubayed is as charming as her restaurant; the child of French and Spanish parents, she lived in Alexandria, Egypt and brings a worldview to CAV’s exquisite flavors and design.

Good food appeared all the time in my four-day visit, including overnight in next-door Warwick where the easy-access airport is.

I chose the NYLO Hotel hoping for a new kind of experience since they say theyíre functional and fun, innovative and mid-price.

Turned out to be true, plus better for breathing. The fourth floor is allergy friendly with a PURE Solutions system touted as taking 98 to 100 percent of the allergens and bacteria away.

Seemed like a big claim to me until the next morning when GW, my traveling partner husband with Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease and perpetually puffy under-the-eyes dark circles, woke up with skin like a baby face — and that lasted two days!

Something healthy, happy too, is happening at NYLO with its high ceilings, enormous windows, custom furniture, polished concrete floors, huge deck overlooking the river and extensive recycling program.

Dinner raised the bar too. Little Neck clams from Narragansett Bay, twice truffled risotto with foraged mushrooms, grilled Brussell sprouts and beet salad suited my kind of taste buds while GW praised thick clam chowder, grilled scallops and a fresh greens salad.

Moving between Warwick and Providence is easy; in fact moving all around Rhode Island is efficient. The state road map opens up to be almost the size of Georgia or Texas maps, but the scale of inch to mile certainly is different.

In Providence, the park and zoo are named for the state’s founder Roger Williams and they emulate his sense of individual liberty: plenty of room to roam with protection for the endangered. His focus was Puritans, Catholics, Quakers and all on faith journeys; the Roger Williams Zoo is focused on animals needing respect and opportunity.

Eighteen of the 130 species here are in danger of extinction and receive special care here to maintain a viable gene pool.

Betsey Williams gave the land —102 acres — in 1870 so this is an old zoo. She was Roger Williamsí great-great-great granddaughter, one more of the ever-appearing Providence stories of families continuing to be involved for centuries.

“Soul liberty” is what the members of America’s first Baptist Church say is their legacy watchword from Williams.

I’m thinking their philosophy must launch happy brain chemicals because people here are cheerful. Helpful too. Consider this a pleasant place for a holiday.

Maybe it’s also the daily reminder from their street signs with generous names like Hope, Benevolent and Benefit.

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