Our semester kicked off with students examining and annotating a series of maps to explore the varied ways the Cove has been represented. Each of the seven maps we studied, depicting time periods between 1790 and 1918, offers a lens into the shifting priorities of the era.

Cross-referencing additional historical maps, pictorial views, and oral histories gathered during our walking tour with researchers from Snowtown Project and our lecture with Silvermoon LaRose from Tomaquag Museum encouraged students to critically interrogate their assigned maps. They then entered their annotations into StoryMaps, focusing on what John Brian Harley, in his essay Maps, Power, and Knowledge, describes as the ‘subliminal geometries’—examining how the Cove was positioned in relation to its surrounding context— along with ‘representational hierarchies’ and ‘silences.’

In many of the maps, regardless of the era, the Cove is presented as the visual anchor of the drawing, reinforcing its mythic and symbolic role within the city. In others, such as the earliest 1790 Fitch map, the Cove’s outline is indeterminate and blurry, highlighting instead the prominent families and businesses that set up along its eastern edge, now Main Street.

Click on the maps above to explore our annotations via StoryMap

In the 1851 Survey, 1882 Bird’s-Eye View, and 1882 City Atlas, the Cove is sharply delineated, but by the 1918 Plat Map, it disappears from the rest of the city. These maps draw attention to building materials, infrastructure like sewer lines, and property ownership and celebrate industrial growth. They shout, Come on down and take part in the progress of Providence! Yet they also prompt questions about what is left unsaid. What stories exist about those laborers who worked in the vast railyards? What might it have felt like to cross that footbridge labeled as spanning the Woonasquatucket River? Did residents spend time at the promenade encircling the Cove Basin, or did the circling railroad tracks render it isolated and uninviting? How were the large green swathes of parkland depicted on these maps used or inhabited?

We examined the maps both in and out of chronological order. Analyzing them sequentially allowed us to trace the evolution of enduring landmarks like the Weybosset Bridge, Market House, and First Baptist Church. Meanwhile, other sites—such as Four Stack Meadows, Carpenter’s Point, and the Rhode Island State Prison, which primarily incarcerated those unable to pay their debts—featured prominently on earlier maps before fading from view.

Some maps invite deeper critical readings. For instance, the 1797 Daniel Anthony map reflects the ambiguity between public and private waters and tidal flats, hinting at—and likely fueling—future debates about ownership and access. Similarly, the Ryder map can be interpreted as an early example of “critical cartography,” and a tool for questioning colonial boundaries. While its top-down perspective contrasts with Indigenous spatial understandings, which view land and people as deeply interconnected, it nevertheless gestures toward the erased histories of the Narragansett, Niantic, and Wampanoag peoples of Rhode Island. These histories continue to prompt critical questions about the tribes’ ongoing struggles for land sovereignty.