Summit Neighborhood Association (SNA) continues to support Your Neighborhood Food Pantry at 533 Branch Avenue by helping to coordinate some of their volunteers, as well as raising funds for this coming holiday season. The pantry is currently looking for extra food and financial donations to provide Thanksgiving meals for community members. For more information or to donate, contact Ynfp22@gmail.com or via their website at YNFP.org. Volunteers also assist the Mount Hope Community Center with their work distributing groceries every Friday to residents in need. More helpers are always needed and appreciated for both organizations. Contact
Snaprov@gmail.com to join the volunteer email list.
The Mile of History Association (MoHA) received the 2024 James McCarvill Leadership Award from GoProvidence. Named for the late executive director of the RI Convention Center Authority, the award recognizes a person or group that has shown outstanding community leadership benefitting the tourism industry, in this case uplifting MoHA’s Heritage Signage project, which will install 20 signs along Benefit Street to inform visitors of the area’s significant history. MoHA expects to have a ribbon cutting for the project next year.
MoHA held their annual meeting on October 27 electing directors for the coming year and sharing updates on projects. For neighbors planning on restoring tree pits in front of their houses, MoHA can help, and a complete description of the approved tree pit structure can be found online at MileofHistory.org/initiatives, with a list of city-approved contractors. The association is also gearing up for the annual Benefit Street Stroll, happening Saturday December 7. The prior weekend, on November 30 and December 1, neighbors are invited to help decorate Benefit Street lamp posts.
The North End Neighborhood Association (NENA) seeks a skilled facilitator to assist in structuring the association, ensuring it operates effectively, and meets the community’s needs. The NENA just released an RFP soliciting proposals from qualified, neutral, and nonpartisan facilitators to guide the association in establishing its organizational structure, developing governance policies, and creating a strategic plan.
Crossing the new footbridge over the Ship Street Canal on a fall evening, Jewelry District Association members Milo and Margery Winter spotted what the Mystic Aquarium reports is a highly unusual visitor from the Arctic: a female Hooded Seal pup. The seal was being monitored by the aquarium after it was spotted in Watch Hill and, according to coastal observers, was heading up the RI coast – until she wandered into Narragansett Bay, where she came ashore on a little gravel beach in Providence.
Volunteers posted a sign warning the public to keep away. Aquarium staff warned that seals under stress tend to swallow small objects like gravel and rocks, as this unhappy seal pup did. The next morning, a rescue team came from the aquarium to pick her up, but, alarmed, she swam into the river and disappeared. Clearly ailing, she soon crawled onto the beach again. Calls from the Jewelry District Association and others brought the rescue team back, who safely retrieved the pup to be cared for at the aquarium. The latest medical report at press time from the Mystic Aquarium: “The seal had her weekly check up exam with our veterinarian, and she is making great progress. She’s a spunky girl, and we hope she will soon make a full recovery!”
Over the last six months, Providence Preservation Society (PPS) has been focused on the city’s Comprehensive Planning process, testifying at public meetings and hearings, organizing community conversations and events, meeting with city officials and issuing amendments in an effort to make the plan more equitable, attentive to the city’s heritage corridors, and better aligned with Providence’s Climate Justice Plan. These recommendations have included expanding the list of protected “historic districts” to include nationally recognized historic neighborhoods in Smith Hill, South Providence, and the West Side, and prioritizing adaptive reuse as a key sustainable building practice.
PPS is also in the midst of launching a multi-year research project to update some of their earliest reports from the 1960s and ‘70s on the homes of College Hill. With the help of experienced volunteers and Brown University students, they are adding information about people who were often ignored in the reports, including women, children, people of color, and members of the poor and working class. These updated histories will be added to their online Guide to Providence Architecture.
Among a full schedule of programs this fall, which included a 13-mile urban hike and a two-day wooden window restoration workshop, PPS hosts a tour of Atlantic Mills on November 3, a heritage event on Fox Point’s Cape Verdean community on November 17, and their biennial Preservation Awards on November 19. Find details at PPSRI.org.
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