My name is Nyrsalee Cruz, I’m a high school student and I intern at the Rhode Island statehouse as a docent. Every Friday for the last year and a half, I’ve given tours to students, community members, and tourists. I walk guests through the rotunda made from Georgian marble, and I guide them in and out of rooms where the laws of our state are debated and history continues to be made. Rhode Island has the third-largest self-supported dome in the world. Rhode Island has a deep, rich history that begins long before this building was created, and we are risking compromising that history by not investing in a State archives center.
The 1663 Royal Charter is not just a piece of paper that legislators used to drag from one statehouse to the next. It was drafted and redrafted twelve times while Roger Williams negotiated directly with King Charles II. In it, Williams secured something radical for his time: full religious freedom. He secured the right for Rhode Islanders to elect their own government. He asked for the authority to form his own militia. He even negotiated trade rights so the colony could bring goods from Europe without taxation, goods that were used to trade with Native Americans for land.
I’ve recently had the pleasure of touring the Rhode Island state archives building. I saw the 1777 Declaration of Independence signed by John Hancock, the Goddard version. While I loved having the opportunity to see some of the historical gems we have in the archives, I couldn’t help but feel like my visit further reinforced the urgency I feel when it comes to supporting the Secretary of State’s proposal for a new state-of-the-art archives building. As Rhode Islanders, we risk losing irreplaceable history because we didn’t invest in an archives building to preserve our documents with the appropriate integrity that each item requires.
Rhode Island has one of the richest histories in the country. With a history stretching back to 1636, we have thousands of documents that need specific conditions to be properly preserved. Our current archives building is small, and it’s being rented out by the state. We are the only state in the country that doesn’t have our own archives building. We’re contributing to the deterioration of these historical items every time we put the need for a better facility on the back burner.
The archivists do a wonderful job with what they have. Their ability to still be flexible despite the conditions not being ideal speaks to their resilience, but there’s no such thing as compromise when you’re doing delicate work to preserve documents from the 1600s. You cannot substitute for the right environment.
The current building is a retrofitted solution to a problem that’s been put on the back burner for too long. A new archives building would be an investment in our history and our future. While the United States is coming up on our semi-quincentennial anniversary, I ask you this, what better way to celebrate the 250th anniversary of our country than by investing in a beautiful space for the artifacts of the past that got us here in the first place?
The State archives have spent thousands of dollars on rent, holding documents off-site due to lack of space, and temporarily pulling materials from off-site after someone has requested them. All the money spent on these various factors is avoidable and seems to have one definitive solution: a building that’s specifically constructed to house, preserve, and display these documents for the long term!
A new building would be an investment in our past and an investment in our future. I am urging our community and voters to vote to preserve our history for generations to come. The rich history portrayed in these documents would boost tourism and inspire memorable experiential field trips for students from across our state.