After annotating historic maps of Providence, we set out to develop a collaborative approach that addressed the limitations we identified in those early maps — most notably, their exclusion of diverse knowledge and perspectives. To counter this, we would embrace a multiplicity of voices — including those of our 15 students and the many other perspectives we would uncover through archival research. We also reconsidered how to represent time. Instead of capturing a singular moment that would falsely imply objectivity, we organized our research around key themes or drivers of development that shaped the Cove’s evolution, allowing for a more dynamic and layered understanding.
A central focus of our investigation was the role of power in shaping the Cove’s landscape and its public spaces. We examined how debates over public versus private rights influenced decisions about the Cove’s future, as well as the resistance of marginalized communities bordering the Cove, like Snowtown and Hardscrabble, often omitted from official maps. We were also curious how ideas about “Nature” influenced the development of Providence, and how they shifted–or persisted–in today’s landscape. Our collective mapping process became a space to unpack these themes, culminating in a constellation of individual and team final projects compiled in the Atlas Field Guide.
Mapping Workshop
To prepare for the collaborative mapping process, Teaching Fellow Corey Watanabe led the class in a “quick and dirty” counter-mapping workshop. Students abstracted key processes and relationships identified in historic maps using found materials like wire, string, folded paper, and cardboard to create physical models of concepts like boundaries, control and dominance, progress and possibility, pinch points, and overlap. This hands-on exercise helped us experiment with materiality and layering techniques that would later inform our mapping process.
The base layer for our collective map was a Google Earth image, overlaid with red yarn tracing two historic boundaries of the Cove. One boundary was drawn from Daniel Anthony’s 1823 map, in which the Great Salt Cove is depicted at its most expansive as a tidal estuary. The second boundary reflected the later, shrunken and spherical form of the Cove, a focal point in many of the late 19th-century maps we analyzed.
Each week, students created new layers exploring distinct thematic drivers of change. These themes included:
Sanitation and Power
Grids, Roads and Nodes
Multi-Species Worlds
Industry and Toxicity
Urban Renewal & Erasure
Sanitation and Power
Cristy, Maria, and Linco explored the narratives surrounding the “foul stench of the Cove,” an intangible force that, paradoxically, was portrayed and documented with striking tangibility in many of the Coveland reports housed at the Providence City Archives. The students marked sources of both perceived and actual pollution. Their annotations identified “night soil”—human waste often dumped onto Providence’s streets before the construction of a formal sewer system—along with various industrial discharge points and ambiguous “miasmas” believed to spread disease through the air and water. These elements coalesced into a symbolic “stench cloud” that loomed over the collective map, visually representing the atmospheric weight of pollution and its social and material consequences.
Discussion among our class this week understood this “stench cloud” and its ability to obscure the interactions below to be symbolic of the hand of those in power who used the narratives around smell to portray the Cove in ways which may have benefitted some but excluded many others. Cristy, Maria, and Linco highlight how arguments around public health and sanitary science were instrumental in supporting the Cove’s eventual filling, the displacement of surrounding communities, and the expansion of the rail industry.
We are visualizing the sense of smell! As we learned in this week’s reading by Ivan Illich, human perception of smell has taken on many different forms. It is a concrete sense, but our response to the different things we can smell is developed culturally.
During this time period, people were beginning to have some knowledge of the mechanisms of disease transmission, and began to reimagine what the shape of human lives and dwellings should take. Society’s ideas about death, decay, human waste, and trash began to change. European based societies, beginning with the wealthy and educated, began advocating for and enforcing changes to burial and sanitation practices. In many ways, we became a culture that pushed these things away – out of sight, out of smelling range.
This attitude informed disposal practices in the mid-1800’s: the goal was to try to push all these things away. Drop all the waste into the water so it can be taken out by the tide, carry the dead to the edge of town for burial.
Cleanliness as a concept began long before we had germ theory, beginning with cultural and religious norms. As a result, when sanitation became a pursuit, it was inextricably linked with a great deal more than the new field of microbiology. As public health was increasingly pursued, decision-making power was crystallized in emerging positions within governmental structures. Modern society began to associate “darkness and ugliness” with illness, death and immorality, implicating those who do not fit the outward description of “light, white, bright, and beautiful.” This led to the destruction of dense housing, outlawing of alley dwellings, portrayed as “fever nests” or “pest holes,” event though the public health threat was not the form or existence of dense housing or darkness, but bad water, or poor access to services.
The Salt Cove was implicated too – it had become murky and foul-smelling, through no fault of its own, and was subject to the same type of erasure that marginalized, poorer communities were. The Great Salt Cove had the misfortune of being identified as neither commodifiable land nor well-behaved water, instead it was a mucky estuary with its own ideas. This does not suit well for European-descended peoples, who could not recognize its inherent value as an ecosystem and storm buffer. Dominant culture failed to recognize the value in the marginalized people that lived within its cities, allowed their conditions to degrade, and used this to justify erasing their presence. So too with this body of land/water, polluted, subsequently blamed, and erased from the map.
– Cristy Falcone, Maria Lopez Vazquez, and Linco Hu
Grids, Roads, and Nodes
In the second week, Sophie, Rasha, and Gabriel traced the historical development of Providence’s street grid, focusing on the key streets and places surrounding the Cove. Temporarily removing the “stench cloud” from the collective map, the vast extent of the space claimed by the freight yards, train sheds, rail lines, and train stations emerges, which had come to occupy the heart of downtown Providence. The argument promoted by rail companies—that the Cove was too polluted and malodorous to remain a public water body—illustrates how private commercial interests took precedence over public rights. The Cove’s loss as a public space made it easier for planners to later justify cutting through the heart of the city with I-95, whose configuration would later be altered once again during the 1990s highway relocation project.
Beginning with the earliest roads mentioned on John Cady’s map of the city in 1700 (namely Weybossett and Pawtuxet Road, which later became Broad Street), we used a sequence of selected maps within these time ranges to identify when key streets began appearing, as well as when they changed or disappeared. Charting them on the collective map with embroidery floss, we began to see some of the ways in which Providence’s form changed in response to its priorities over time. Additionally, we marked out ‘nodes’, or key places called out on our source maps, with labels and some images, all dated to their respective appearance.
The physical charting of roads as they were established over time gave us a sequential understanding of how Providence’s street grid came together over time. There are several takeaways in the finished map. One is a piecemeal understanding of the city’s priorities, achieved by the layering of bygone nodes and streets over the present day aerial. The roads which once made up Snowtown appear again over the area presently occupied by the State House, and the mall site below the empty space carved out for the massive railroad yard situated there in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. A story begins to emerge about how the land around the Cove was shaped and re-shaped in the interests of the city. Additionally, the hierarchy of certain roads with their stability and disappearance reflect on the importance of certain streets for certain groups. Namely, we discovered that the roads that led to governmental or public institutions remained while neighborhood streets in Snowtown were unnamed and disappeared.
Some clues also rose to the surface about the role of the Cove and the importance of access to its banks over time—the grid evolved, in a way, with one axis oriented from the southwest towards Market Square and College Hill, and a parallel axis linking the banks of the Providence River with the banks of the Cove. The importance of the Cove for firefighting, farming, and general urban organization is revealed through the alignment and obfuscation of the city’s roads and nodes over time; through this exercise we can see the traced outlines of the public park and promenade of the nineteenth century, the placement of the State Prison on the isolated peninsula of Great Point, and the taking of massive tracts of land for the railroads together as a part of the story of the city.
Moreover, our mapping exercise found the boldest spatial changes was in the 1950s with the Federal-Aid Highway Act that imposed the I-95 and US Highway 6 with their right-of-ways on the Cove and railyards. Beyond severing the pedestrian access between downtown Providence, South Providence, Federal Hill, and Smith Hill, the physical footprint of these highways pose a great obligation to maintaining such structures and/or disassembling them when redesigning Providence’s transportation infrastructure, as seen with the rerouting of I-95 and the creation of the Michael S. Van Leesten Memorial Bridge. In summary, Providence’s current spatial organization is heavily influenced by historical motives, prejudices, and master plans that have always been in flux.
– Sophie Kaplan-Bucciarelli, Rasha Lama, and Gabriel Peter
Multispecies Worlds
Molly, Travis, and Yasmine took a deep dive into mapping the non-human worlds that have inhabited the Cove over time. Their work draws attention to the multispecies entanglements that shaped—and continue to shape—the Cove’s landscape.
Yasmine Chen focused specifically on fauna, mapping a broad array of animal species that once occupied or passed through the Cove. Her work revealed that the Great Salt Cove was a hive of biodiversity, from aquatic species like oysters and soft-shelled crabs to terrestrial and semi-aquatic species like white-tailed deer, beavers, otters, and even moose. As humans became a dominant animal around the Cove, the presence of domesticated and non-domesticated species like pigs, cows, and rats grew in prominence. These animals became integral to the daily life and economy of the Covelands, serving as food sources, labor, and nuisances to some. As a class we discussed how narratives of contamination, pollution, and cleanliness discussed in the earlier Sanitation and Power week were linked to animal presence, with certain species (like pigs) and their caretakers (often immigrants and poor people) seen as symbols of disorder.
Molly and Travis focused on plant life, drawing on research from the Brown Herbararium’s collection. This herbarium contains over 100 species collected from the Cove area, particularly during the late 19th century—a period of intense transformation in Providence.
The herbarium specimens we choose to highlight are primarily from the collections of Wiliam Whitman Bailey and James Collins labeled “cove lands, “wastes,” or “old cove basin” (circa 1880-1900). While the exact location of the specimens is not provided, we mapped some specific locations to roughly correspond to the areas where we think the plant may have originated from. For example, scarlet pimpernel (Anagallis arvensis) is located by the docks, as we surmise it may have come to the area via ballast. As an area being filled in near an ocean port, it’s likely that “ballast plants” arrived in Providence as they did in New York City, according to the reading “Dump-Heap Naturalists” by Catherine Seavitt Nordenson.
Figures such as WW Bailey, Professor of Botany at Brown University and founder of the Herbarium, seemed to have been fascinated by the “adventive flora” and observed how they competed with native plants in harsh conditions. We would be curious to know if WW Bailey expressed an opinion about the future of the Cove. He would have lived during that time and held a relatively prominent position within Providence.
Most of the specimens we highlight on the map are what would be considered opportunistic and ubiquitous plants with little value (aka WASTES). They are annuals that thrive in poor soil conditions, self-sow prolifically, and are not always native to this continent. Yet, a deeper analysis reveals the myriad of ecosystem functions these plants offer, as well as their relevance to humans (specifics for each plant are written out in the key table pinned to the map), such as simpler’s joy (Verbena hastata) or fowl bluegrass (Poa palustris).
In addition to the late 1800s specimens, we examined plant specimens collected in 2015 by researchers who compared their heavy metal concentrations with those found in the historical samples studied by Bailey and Collins. Interestingly, the research revealed the value of herbarium species as indicators of past pollution. Once again, the botanists collected opportunistic plants commonly regarded as weeds. It was fascinating to observe how contemporary herbarium collectors continue to operate within the frameworks established by their “gentleman botanist” predecessors—not only in terms of geographic sampling but also in their methods and processes.
One species we chose to highlight was Japanese knotweed (Fallopia japonica), a plant often villainized as an invasive threat in this region. However, emerging research is revealing its potential ecological and human health benefits. Notably, studies have shown that Japanese knotweed contains compounds that may help combat Lyme disease, which is transmitted by deer ticks—another species frequently vilified in this part of the world. This dual reconsideration of knotweed and ticks invites us to think more critically about the complexities of “invasiveness” and the shifting roles that species play within human and non-human ecosystems.
The only species we identified that is no longer prevalent today is wild rice (Zizania aquatica), a culturally and nutritionally significant plant for certain Indigenous communities. While we could not find evidence online of Narraganset or Wampanoag communities harvesting wild rice, its documented presence in the Cove during the late 1800s is noteworthy. This raises the possibility that wild rice may have been connected to Indigenous practices and foodways prior to colonization.
– Travis Kelley, Molly Lefanowicz, and Yasmine Chen
Industry and Toxicity
Providence’s industrial history, marked by its confluence of rivers, harbor, port, and rail infrastructure, played a critical role in Rhode Island’s rise as a manufacturing powerhouse during the 19th and 20th centuries. This week, Meeghan, Mary, and Brooke identified more than 40 industrial sites on the collective map, illustrating a geography marked by contamination, toxic legacies, and cycles of redevelopment and gentrification. To visualize these locations, the students used shiny, reflective materials, symbolizing both the allure of industrial progress and the lasting presence of environmental toxicity.
The evolution of the Great Salt Cove is deeply intertwined with Providence’s industrial development, particularly during the Industrial Revolution. As mills and factories proliferated along the Woonasquatucket and Moshassuck Rivers, they frequently discharged pollutants directly into the Cove, contributing to the area’s ecological decline.
Several industrial hubs emerged to the south and west of the Cove. There were particular concentrations of metals-related industries in the Jewelry District; utilities-related industries along the shore in Fox Point; and textile-, metals- and rubber-related industries in Olneyville–but even outside these dense clusters, there were factories scattered seemingly indiscriminately throughout the city’s neighborhoods.
One exception to this is College Hill, seat of Brown University since 1764. This neighborhood is on steep land and not directly on a river, so perhaps this contributed to the district not becoming another manufacturing area. But perhaps, too, there was enough wealth already in this district that a kind of NIMBYism kept out the workaday factories.
Of course, we now know about the toxic legacies of so many of the factories that we marked on the map. In our narrowed area of interest, there are currently at least six sites that the EPA categorizes as a brownfield. A superfund site–Centredale Manor, a chemical manufacturer and drum refurbisher that occupied the site from the 1940s to the 1970s–is not too far away in North Providence, on the banks of the Woonasquatucket.
As we learned from our guest lecturer Scott Frickel from Brown University who has cataloged historic industrial contamination across Providence, the process of designating Superfund sites is closely linked to redevelopment. This designation typically triggers some level of environmental remediation but also obfuscates past uses. In areas that have not been primed for redevelopment, the legacy and risks of historical activities remains more present, and often exacerbates existing social inequities, particularly along racial and class lines.
– Meeghan Truelove, Mary Ritchie, and Brooke Dutton
Urban Renewal & Erasure
In the final week of collective mapping, Marguerite, Julae, and Evan explored themes of urban renewal, displacement, and erasure. During our walk with the Snowtown Collective, historian Traci Picard noted that between 1948 and 1960, 15% of Providence’s population was displaced from their homes. While the mid-20th century is often associated with the height of urban renewal in American cities, an earlier iteration of “urban renewal” can be seen in the displacement of Snowtown — a working-class Black and Irish neighborhood on the Cove’s north shore — first by the construction of the railroad and later by the building of the Rhode Island State House.
Marguerite, Julae, and Evan approached their mapping as a process of “re-revealing” erased neighborhood fabric while also visualizing the mechanisms of power used to dismantle these communities. They layered archival traces of lost neighborhoods over the present-day landscape, using vellum to evoke the ephemeral yet enduring memory of displacement. This method highlighted both the persistence of past communities and the deliberate strategies of erasure that continue to shape Providence’s urban form.
The concept of urban decay is quite nebulous but appears to be very much linked to the concept of wastelands as discussed in Vittoria Di Palma book Wastelands. These lands are often considered blighted, contaminated and “highly resistant to improvement”. The process of redevelopment includes slum clearances to demolish low-income neighborhoods often supported by eminent domain or the expropriation of private lands for ostensibly public uses.
American social psychiatrist Mindy Thompson Fullilove wrote that urban renewal often affected Black people disproportionately. She describes this process as a traumatic experience or a “root shock,” which destroyed emotional ecosystems. In April 1959, residents in the dense and predominantly Black and immigrant neighborhood of Lippitt Hill received pamphlets on their doors from the Providence Redevelopment Authority, informing them that Lippitt Hill had been marked as “blighted” and was slated for redevelopment. Residents were told they could return as renters of new apartments that now front Olney Street. The promise never materialized.
The Lippitt Hill redevelopment plan outlines the creation of a “vigorous and outstanding neighborhood consistent with the position of America as a leading moral force in a pluralistic world” in the East side of Providence.
The process and ideology of redevelopment strings together the destruction of the Lippitt Hill community, the filling of the Great Salt Cove and the erasure of Snowtown in Providence.
– Julae Tan, Evan Friedman, and Marguerite Kreuzkamp
