Providence Through the Years: A rambling journey through the year of Motif’s birth

It was twenty years ago today… At the time, we could not have predicted it, but the launch of Motif Magazine in August 2004 might have been the lucky charm New England sports fans were waiting for. Over eight decades, the fall refrain for Red Sox fans was always the same. “Wait ‘til next year.” But in 2004, the Red Sox entered the postseason. After winning a nail-biter in the playoffs against their rival, the New York Yankees, they would win their first World Series trophy in 86 years. Coincidence? Hard to tell.

THEN AND NOW

Then: The Greater Providence area in 2004 had a population of 1,181,000. Now: The estimated population is 1,210,000. Then: Readers of Motif were spending a night strolling through Waterfire. Even then, it was a Providence tradition for 10 years. Meanwhile, the Providence Place Mall was celebrating its fifth anniversary.

Now: Waterfire is 30 years old, and the Providence Place Mall is a little vacant due to Mr. Bezos. However, it’s still going strong.

Then: California native Akemi Brodsky was new to Rhode Island and Brown University in the Fall of 2004. Brodsky, the author of The Brill Pill, recalled her early days in Providence, “My first impressions of Providence were of a pretty small city dominated by campus, College Hill, and the Providence Place Mall….The movie theater and the IMAX, in particular, were fairly new at the time, and that was one of the main places to hang out. Occasionally, we would venture out a little further. Federal Hill was already a destination for great Italian food. Pastiche was a popular destination for dessert. There were also a lot of hidden gems around Providence the further you ventured out, and a lot of the little neighborhoods – even areas as close as Wayland Square, for instance – felt like special little towns.” Brodsky fondly remembers the bar Fish Co., which went away and recently returned, driven by nostalgia. Brodsky commented, “A lot of Providence institutions, it seems – are still around – so maybe that says something else about the city.”

Now: One reason much of historic Providence lingers today is due to the work of the Providence Preservation Society. Executive Director Marisa Angell Brown reports, “Some of the outstanding success stories in Providence have related to the adaptive reuse of the city’s unparalleled collection of 19th-century mill buildings for contemporary housing, offices, and maker spaces. Monohasset Mill received an adaptive reuse award from Providence Preservation Society exactly twenty years ago, in 2004.” She cautions that much work remains and highlights the Cranston Street Armory as a historic building that has been vacant and “endangered” since 2003.

Then: The top business story of 2004 for Rhode Island was the merger between Fleet Bank (formerly Industrial National Bank) and Bank of America. Within a decade, the merger led to staff being moved out of state, and the iconic “Industrial Trust Co. Building,” popularly known as the “Superman Building,” became vacant.

Now: As of 2024, the skyline-defining structure is still empty.

Then: By 2004, a Rhode Island Native had returned home to run for political office based on business acumen and a career as a leader in Financial Services. Businessman and Harvard graduate Steven Laffey was the republican mayor of Cranston from 2003 to 2007. His political career ended when he ran for the US Senate in 2006 and lost in the primary to incumbent Lincoln Chafee, himself the loser in the 2006 general election to Senator Sheldon Whitehouse. He still holds the seat in 2024.

Then: Alex and Ani, the RI jewelry company, was also a 2004 baby. Started by Rhode Islander Carolyn Rafaelian, the company found fame and fortune as a popular brand for celebrities such as Gwyneth Paltrow. At the company’s height, the firm and Rafaelian sponsored an ice rink in Providence, owned a vineyard, and a Newport mansion. Alex and Ani peaked as a trend in the mid-teens. By 2023, the firm had declared bankruptcy, shuttered its store offices, and outsourced its distribution to an out-of-state company.

Now: The problem of homelessness has gone through ups and downs over the past two decades. In 2004, Ann Nolan, CEO of Crossroads Rhode Island, wrote in the Providence Journal that over 6,000 people had been in homeless shelters in 2003. She lamented that the income needed to rent a two-bedroom apartment was $13.42/hour. The minimum wage was only $6.75/hour. Checking in with the current CEO, Michelle Wilcox, Those figures are now $27/hour for a one-bedroom apartment and $33.20/hour for a two-bedroom. The minimum wage is $14/hour. The number of people in shelters plunged between 2004-2019 to 1,055 before doubling to 2,0442 this year. Wilcox attributes the increase in shelter use to the pandemic, where the loss of jobs and the subsequent housing crisis led to higher rents – effectively pricing many people out of their homes.

Then: Increasingly, the internet cemented itself more firmly into the lives of Rhode Islanders during the past 20 years. Amazon shares cost between $1.87 and $2.87 during 2004, and local stores felt the bite of big bookstore chains like B. Dalton and Borders, as well as Amazon. College Hill Bookstore, a community staple since 1965 (and a former employer of this correspondent), closed in 2004. Over the next two decades, most of the chain bookstores were driven out of business by Amazon, which today has a stock price near $200.

Then: RI businessman Ben Mondor, owner of the Pawtucket Red Sox, was inducted into the Boston Red Sox Hall of Fame in 2004 for his efforts to save the local AAA ball club. By 2024, Mondor died, and the team moved to Worcester, Massachusetts.

Then: Massachusetts made history in 2004 by becoming the first state in the nation to allow same-sex couples the right to marry (then called “gay marriage”). It would be a decade before RI extended the same right to its residents. The legislature saw bills on that topic yearly until it was accomplished in 2013. One native Rhode Islander studying at Brown University remembered his efforts to bring marriage equality to the state: “In 2004, as a college student, I began organizing volunteers to go to the State House to advocate for marriage equality. I still vividly remember rallies in the Rotunda and lobbying legislators directly in the House Chamber. It was my first experience with the wonderful accessibility of the Rhode Island government, where it is often easy to get ahold of legislators to share your point of view. The marriage equality campaign also reinforced my optimism that with enough time and hard work, seemingly impossible causes can become a reality in our democratic system, especially those causes that are grounded in appealing to the inherent goodness of people.” Today, that student is the congressman representing the second congressional district of Rhode Island, Seth Magaziner.

NEXT

Brown, the executive director of the Providence Preservation Society, looks towards the future with hope and a plan. “If we want to continue to save and repurpose the buildings we already have, which we all know is more sustainable and climate-friendly than demolishing and constructing new ones, the state needs to reinstitute a robust tax credit program as so many other states have done. If we do that, we will have many more successes to celebrate twenty years from now.” Wilcox, CEO of Crossroads Rhode Island, also feels optimistic. She believes what worked from 2004 to 2019 will work again. What is different now is the Rhode Island state government places housing as a high priority. The General Assembly also made housing a priority. The state now has a Secretary of Housing. Among its many projects, Crossroads is building 176 low-income apartments in Providence. “The solution to homelessness is housing,” she says. Wilcox is confident that just as the numbers were brought down from 2005-2019, the issue of chronic homelessness can be solved in Rhode Island. 2044 will be the fortieth anniversary of Motif. We can only hope that many of the problems we face now, such as the preservation & reuse of vacant buildings and chronic homelessness will be only memories by the next anniversary issue. With a median age in New England of about 36, the odds are good that a teenager today will write the next update in twenty years. My advice to them? Take lots of notes. •