[Summit] in response re Blackstone

[Elizabeth Grossman]

Hello all,   I think the point is not what the alternative is — one will be found — there is alerady one proposed by architect Friedrich St. Florian which would maintain the walls and create a cluster of houses within them .. but the number of houses would be a couple fewer as I understand.   i am posting below the letter I sent to the CPC so you would see in full my thinking on the importance of not repeating Balton Road in this established neighborhood.  Elizabeth
 
Christine West, Chair

Providence City Planning Commission

Dear Christine West,

I am writing to support the efforts of the citizens petitioning the City Planning Commission not to approve the developer’s plan for 288 Blackstone Boulevard.  I agree with all their objections to the current proposal, but would like to make a few additional points to underscore the importance of the Beresford-Nicholson estate for the character of the Slater Avenue neighborhood:

If you drive north along Slater Avenue between Mount Street and Rochambeau Avenue you enter a very different world from the more southern part of Slater.  The east side of this north stretch of the street is notable for the walls and trees that hide the houses beyond. The most notable stretch of all begins where Slater, breaking its straight march from Irving Avenue to Rochambeau, unexpectedly jogs west.   

The specific reason for the jog is not due, as one might assume, to topography. Rather the disposition of this northern stretch of Slater is explained by the fact that before there was the Slater Avenue we know today there was the Beresford-Nicholson mansion with its notable out buildings, extensive landscaping, surrounding walls, and buffer of berms and trees. Without the Nicholson estate, Slater could have run straight from Irving Avenue north to Rochambeau.  The street is deflected westward because it swerves so as not to cut through the grounds of the Nicholson estate.

One does not have to rely on the drawings for the proposed development to see how it will destroy the character of this street and neighborhood. One has only to look at the developer’s work nearing completion on Balton Road --  large houses crowded together, plastered against the street edge, with prominent garages and driveways rather than grass and trees -- to see how out of place such a development would be on Slater.  This new housing is the antithesis of the neighborhood that people are appealing to the CPC to protect, a neighborhood that is notably both modest and gracious, unpretentious and harmonious with a canopy of mature trees.   

Providence is a city of neighborhoods nested within neighborhoods which give those of us who live here a strong sense of place that expands from the street we live on to the larger community.   These “micro” neighborhoods are defined in good part by their physical cohesion.  Erode their visible distinctiveness and you erode also the social cohesiveness that contributes both to their amenity and by extension to their role in creating a safe and diverse city.  

If, when Slater Avenue was laid out, the city saw fit to adjust the line of the street to protect the integrity of the estate, how much more reason to protect the estate and its boundary wall today now that they have become integral to the character of the neighborhood that has grown up around them, a neighborhood appreciated not only by its immediate residents but by those of us who enjoy it as a byway that is both of the city and apart from it.

I ask therefore in the most heartfelt way that the City Planning Commission protect this neighborhood that is valued so much for its very special character and to which the Beresford-Nicholson estate is key.

Sincerely,

Elizabeth Grossman

Professor of Architectural History Emeritus

Rhode Island School of Design

 

Resident 130 8th Street

 

 

 

 

 
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