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I Walked 20,000 Steps Through Providence's Most Forgotten Neighborhood
I started at Kennedy Plaza, hopped on a RIPTA bus using my WAVE Card to get around, and walked 20,000 steps to prove Providence is actually as walkable as everyone says. My destination: Olneyville. One of the most densely industrialized neighborhoods in all of Rhode Island by the mid-1800s. Today most people drive through it without stopping. I walked every block of it.
I'm Dave. I make videos about Rhode Island history.
What we cover in this one: the Woonasquatucket River and how it powered mill after mill along this corridor starting in the 1700s. Atlantic Mills, built in 1852, with those two domed towers you can see from half a mile away and a staircase inside that people keep posting on Instagram. The Roger Williams Brewing Company building from 1836, which is the oldest surviving mill structure in Olneyville and has been a wool mill, a brewery, and an artist colony. The United Electric Railways substation on Dike Street, where the Skate Hut ran a halfpipe on the upper floors and Green Day played the basement. And Olneyville New York System, open since 1946, James Beard Award winner in 2014, and still the best thing you can eat at midnight in this city.
This neighborhood absorbed wave after wave of people. Irish, French Canadian, Polish, Italian, and starting in the 1980s, Dominican and Latin American families who made it their own. The mills left. The people stayed. New murals went up. A fish ladder went in.
That's Olneyville. That's Rhode Island.
If you grew up here, share this with someone who remembers what this neighborhood was. If you've never been, come find out what you've been missing.
Follow for more Rhode Island history you didn't know you needed.
I'm Dave. I make videos about Rhode Island history.
What we cover in this one: the Woonasquatucket River and how it powered mill after mill along this corridor starting in the 1700s. Atlantic Mills, built in 1852, with those two domed towers you can see from half a mile away and a staircase inside that people keep posting on Instagram. The Roger Williams Brewing Company building from 1836, which is the oldest surviving mill structure in Olneyville and has been a wool mill, a brewery, and an artist colony. The United Electric Railways substation on Dike Street, where the Skate Hut ran a halfpipe on the upper floors and Green Day played the basement. And Olneyville New York System, open since 1946, James Beard Award winner in 2014, and still the best thing you can eat at midnight in this city.
This neighborhood absorbed wave after wave of people. Irish, French Canadian, Polish, Italian, and starting in the 1980s, Dominican and Latin American families who made it their own. The mills left. The people stayed. New murals went up. A fish ladder went in.
That's Olneyville. That's Rhode Island.
If you grew up here, share this with someone who remembers what this neighborhood was. If you've never been, come find out what you've been missing.
Follow for more Rhode Island history you didn't know you needed.