Providence 375 Essay Series
The Making of a City | Providence 1832
by Albert T. Klyberg, L.H.D., Public Historian served as Director of the Rhode Island Historical Society from 1969 to 1999.
Tempers flared, shots were fired, five people died and the Sheriff read the "Riot Act". In four days of public tumult caused by saloon toughs and rowdy sailors pulling down and setting fire to houses owned by black folks in the Olney Street neighborhood, the weaknesses of the Town Meeting form of government in Providence were on display for all to see.
BROADSIDE PUBLISHED AFTER THE FIRST NIGHT OF RIOTING
While few people would say that the racial riot, which resulted in the death of five citizens and brought out the state militia was not the compelling event forcing the Rhode Island General Assembly to grant Providence a city charter in 1831, it would be a mistake to conclude that Providence became a city overnight. Becoming a city was a gradual process, comprised of many factors, simmering from 1819 to 1831.
Historical studies of these important years cite an increase in vice and violence, the social breakdown of the old sense of community, the decline of church influences as a stabilizing force, the rise of intemperance, growing racism, and the increasing awareness among the middle and upper classes of the town regarding the need for reform measures such as firmer municipal controls and order. The beginning of the rise of foreign immigration also played a role in the demographic dynamic. Yet, these negative conditions, leading to underlying reasons for the riot, do not adequately explain all the forces that led to the physical urban evolution from town to city.
For most of the 18th century, Providence was a town barely half the size of Newport. Although, unlike Newport, which was severely damaged and depopulated as an enemy-occupied town during three years of the American Revolution, Providence escaped relatively intact with a wartime population of about 4,900. An extensive fire, however, in 1801 destroyed about sixty buildings along the South Main Street wharves. That was nothing, though, compared with the destruction accompanying the "Great Gale of 1815" that drove ships in the harbor through the Weybosset Bridge and into the windows of nearby buildings. Nearly all the downtown at the foot of College Hill and the Weybosset and Westminster side flooded with about 500 buildings damaged or destroyed. Yet by 1820, Providence had the tenth largest urban concentration in the new United States with a population of nearly 12,000, and the recovery of the town as depicted in Daniel Anthony's map of 1823 contrasted to his similar map twenty years earlier is nothing short of remarkable. By the date of the September 1831 riot, the population was almost 17,000--a nearly 42% population increase over the previous decade.
One factor that made Providence a city was its strategic location as the junction and crossing point of rivers at the head of Narragansett Bay. This location was more in tune with growing trends in manufacturing and distribution of goods than serving simply as a base for fishing and the trade with China and South America. Port access to Narragansett Bay shipping was only part of the story. From 1800 on, Providence was a hub and busy intersection for nearly two dozen turnpikes. Over 325 stagecoaches arrived and departed from new hotels and taverns weekly. The Blackstone Canal tapped the central Massachusetts hinterland. It became a vital supply source and product carrier for a string of some fifty factory villages stretching up the Blackstone Valley to Worcester. At the time of its incorporation as a city, Providence had its first of two railroad connections chartered and the beginnings of a rail and steamboat interchange system that sent its textiles, machine tools, steam engines, silverware and jewelry into the wide world. A long parade of new immigrants from other shores came to take up new trades and chase a living.
In the decade before incorporation, five new banks expanded the finance sector begun by the Old Stone Bank in 1819. Insurance companies, like the Providence and Washington, originally started to cover risks of shipping, were joined by new companies covering households and mills. Steam engines were not only built and sent out from Providence, but by 1830, there were two in the town that powered local mills as well. A year later, Jabez Gorham, in partnership with Henry L. Webster, began the manufacture of silverware, heralding the city's coming pre-eminence as a world class leader in the precious metal industry.
The 1820 period of population growth witnessed the appearance of seven new churches, whose steeples competed with ships in the harbor for dominance of the skyline. The decade spawned a dozen newspapers, including the Providence Journal and the creation of a commercial/retail district centered around the Arcade, the Whitman Block, and the City Hotel.
MARKET SQUARE CA. 1825. THE MARKET HOUSE
(RIGHT WITH ARCHED DOORS)
WAS USED AS CITY HALL UNTIL 1878.
The arrival of clubs, societies, and organizations devoted to reforms of community life, and an elevation of community life itself through libraries, museums, lyceums, theatrical and musical performances became emblematic of the urban scene. These all had as much influence in the shaping of the city as the awarding of the municipal charter.