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| | 1939: Before Miriam moved to Summit |
A Brief History of Miriam Hospital
For more than 50 years, Miriam Hospital has expanded in Summit Neighborhood.
Providence's original zoning ordinance, adopted in 1923, declared hospitals
to be a commercial use. The Miriam's original site was on Parade Street
in downtown Providence.
A Change in Zoning Permits a Move
| | 1952: Miriam moves to JORI Building |
In 1951, the Providence City Council exempted hospitals from zoning
regulations. The following year Miriam Hospital moved to Summit Avenue
into the building formerly occupied by the Jewish Orphanage of Rhode Island
(JORI). The orphanage building still stands at the corner of Summit
Avenue and Fifth Street. It is used for hospital administrative offices.
| | 1962: Miriam begins buying up adjacent houses |
For the next 34 years, Miriam purchased and tore down more than 50
houses adjoining their campus. They swallowed up a block of Sixth
Street, and made repeated appeals to the city to abandon the block
of Seventh Street between Summit and Highland Avenues.
The Institutional Zone
In 1986, recognizing the damage being done to the city's neighborhoods by
health and educational institutions, the City Council adopted the first
Institutional Zone ordinance. The ordinance re-introduced hospitals
and colleges to zoning regulation by creating a new "floating" zone
drawn around their existing property holdings.
| | 1972: Sixth Street is abandoned |
The I-Zone prohibits hospitals and colleges from converting residential
property to institutional use beyond their borders, while affording them
wide latitude to develop within their I-Zoned areas.
Summit Avenue School Falls Victim
Just as the I-Zone ordinance was being considered, establishing borders
around hospitals and colleges, Miriam Hospital's border was drawn to
include the Summit Avenue Elementary School, which the city had negotiated
to sell to the hospital, despite strong neighborhood opposition.
Miriam promptly tore the building down and built the Fain Outpatient
Clinic on the site.
| | 1981: More hospital, fewer houses |
It was thought at the time that the I-Zone was first established that
it would encourage hospitals to seek commercially-zoned areas for future
expansion, and early purchases by Miriam Hospital along North Main Street
seemed to confirm that the I-Zone ordinance was working.
| | 1997: Summit Avenue School is gone |
Miriam Begins Another Round
Today we see the start of another round of expansion and investment by
the hospital in their landlocked main campus. Miriam has proposed to
knock down two buildings and replace them with a single huge building.
Their immediate need is for only one floor of this new building, yet
they plan to build four floors in a building that, from the outside,
will ultimately rise to six stories in height.
At the same time they are shedding their properties in commercially
zoned areas. They have sold the Ethan Allen and Sears Automotive
sites, and they plan to sell the Sears Department Store site.
We ask, where will they expand next time? When will it stop?
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