Weird Island

41. WATERFIRE: In the Renaissance City

Episode Summary

WaterFire is the quintessential Providence experience, centering around a series of nearly 100 bonfires along the three rivers that pass through the middle of downtown Providence. But just 40 years ago, you might not have even known that those rivers existed. If you think WaterFire isn’t weird, well, maybe it isn't. But the fact that, at one point, Providence completely covered its rivers, is.

Episode Notes

Episode Source Material:

Episode Transcription

Happy New Year! As 2021 comes to a close, I just wanted to say thank you for spending some of this weird year with me. In a lot of ways, this year wasn’t what people imagined. But I hope that despite the challenges we all collectively faced, you’re able to look back on it and pick out some great little moments or stories or things you learned or adventures you went on that made you smile.
And I couldn’t think of a more fitting topic for the last day of the year than one of Providence’s most iconic events, one that really symbolizes the life of the city for a lot of people and represents coming together, which means a little more to people these days. It started 27 years ago, to the day, on New Years Eve 1994 and was originally called First Fire. But today, we call it WaterFire and according to former Providence Mayor Buddy Cianci, “There’s nothing like it anywhere in the world.”
I’m Sara and you’re listening to Weird Island. Each week, I’ll be telling you about the strangest stories I can dig up from my tiny, little state of Rhode Island. And if you think WaterFire isn’t weird enough, then hang on for the strange story of how Providence lost and then found and celebrated its rivers.
WaterFire has been called “the crown jewel of the Providence Renaissance,” and “the most popular work of art created in the capital city’s 371-year history.” And you know what? I never would have described it as art. That might sound like an insult to the artist, Barnaby Evans, but I have a feeling he might actually be flattered. Because to me WaterFire is an experience, it’s a mood, it’s the smells and the sights and the music and the people. Evans has described his work by saying, “It is designed so people can interact with each other, with the artwork and with the urban environment.” And I think it does that so well, the line between the work of the art and the city itself is blurred.
If you’ve never been, WaterFire takes place along the Providence River, which is framed by a pedestrian riverwalk that winds through the heart of the city as the river makes its way to the ocean. Nearly 100 bonfires are lit in the river itself, in these metal baskets that hold the flames just above the water. The orange glow of the fire flickers and rolls on the glassy waves as volunteers drift along in boats, stoking the flames and adding wood. And as you meander along the riverwalk, weaving between people and vendors and street performers, you can feel the heat from the flames radiating towards you, and you can smell the homie smokey scent and hear the crackling of the fire blending with the specially curated soundtrack that changes with each performance and seems to come from everywhere in the city. I’ve gone on beautiful, warm nights and I’ve gone when it was pouring rain. And, you know what, the rainy night might have been my favorite WaterFire experience. It was still completely packed, and every surface reflected the yellow and orange fire. And the city was beautifully alive.
WaterFire was created by Barnaby Evans in 1994 as an art installation celebrating the tenth anniversary of First Night in Providence. It originally included only 11 bonfires. The second iteration, called Second Fire, was installed in 1996 for the International Sculpture Conference. After that, supporters convinced Evans to create an ongoing installation, and started a grassroots effort to establish WaterFire as a non-profit.
Today, WaterFire has grown to nearly 100 bonfires and it takes place twice a month between May and November (most years, this one was a little funky). And the whole thing celebrates the beauty of the city and the river and the public spaces and parks that run along it. But just 40 years ago, the river wasn’t even there. It was hidden away, forgotten, underneath buildings and roads and parking lots, almost completely invisible to residents. And tourists, don’t worry about them. They weren’t even here. Because Providence, which today has been called one of the best small cities, well, then it was known as the armpit of New England. Providence needed to reinvent itself, and in order for WaterFire to exist, the city had to “take the river out from underneath roads and the basements and foundations of buildings that were built on top of it. It was the rediscovery of the rivers that made the city what it is today.
So, fair warning, I’m about to spend way too much time talking about the rivers, and I’m going to cover a big window of time. It might seem excessive. But bear with me, because I think if you’re anything like me, you’re going to find that the context makes WaterFire feel just a little more special than you thought.
So, Providence’s rivers have always been central to the city’s development. The two rivers that run through the heart of downtown Providence are the Woonasquatucket and the Moshassuck, and when the two meet they form the Providence River which empties into the bay.
5,000 or so years ago, as climates grew warmer and glaciers receded, the Providence River and the Narragansett Bay expanded in size until they formed the largest estuary in New England, which is a place where rivers transition into the ocean. The mixing of seawater and freshwater provides high levels of nutrients, making them some of the most productive ecosystems on earth and a great place to fish and live. And people began settling around this estuary.
When Roger Williams arrived in Rhode Island, he located Providence at the head of Narragansett Bay, along what was called the Great Salt Cove where the Moshassuck and Woonasquatucket met. If you’re looking for the Cove today, it doesn’t exist. Because it was filled in and things like the State House and the Mall are plopped right where this cove used to be. Let me say that another way. In Roger Williams’ day, much of what is now the heart of downtown Providence was completely underwater. This blows my mind, because you can see no evidence of it today. Basically from where the state house stands today all the way down to Kennedy Plaza and as far east as North Main was covered in hundreds of acres of water deep enough for ships to sail into. Check out the first link in the show notes for some really great maps on the Art in Ruins site showing where the Cove was and how it changed over time. This Cove was important because it was full of salmon, oysters, ducks, geese and other sources of food and it formed an inner, protected harbor. And in addition to that, running along the eastern edge of this cove was a trail that the Narragansett and other local tribes used to travel from Massachusetts Bay along the coast all the way to New York.
But over time, the shape of the city changed. The Industrial Revolution took place, and mills popped up along the major Rhode Island rivers. In 1828, the Blackstone Canal was constructed, stretching from Providence to Worcester, and allowing for the shipment of raw materials and manufactured products on boats. And then just 10 or so years later, the railroads came in, making the canal obsolete. Suddenly it was these railroads, not the rivers, that dictated the shape of the city.
By 1850, several regional rail lines led into Providence, and Union Terminal was built bordering both what would become Kennedy Plaza and the Great Salt Cove, which had started to shrink as it was filled and landscaped into a smaller, circular body of water. The city allowed the railroads to make the cove into a railroad turnaround, which would require further filling, but only on the condition that they landscape the area surrounding the cove into a raised park with trees and a walking path, which sounds pretty nice.
But by 1881, continued development of railroad tracks pretty much cut off the cove from foot traffic, and the city sold the cove basin to the railroads. It was filled entirely in 1891, despite some opposition. Truthfully, by that time, the cove was a stinking mess. Providence didn’t have a sewage system until the 1900s, and waste from growing neighborhoods, mills, and slaughterhouses upstream made their way into the body of water, which smelled so bad most people could get behind filling it. So this historically important body of water became a freight yard. And later, a parking lot.
When the Cove was filled, the Moshassuck and Woonasquatucket, which had previously met there, were corralled into stone channels that flowed into a human-made confluence with the Providence River downstream. As cars became important, streets were suddenly more valuable than the stinking, sewage filled rivers, and they were almost entirely paved over or hidden under concrete and steel bridges. In fact, at the base of College Hill, where today there are a number of small, Venetian inspired bridges crossing the river, there was one massive bridge, 1,147 feet wide, called the Crawford Street Bridge, that was listed in the Guinness Book of World Records as the World’s Widest Bridge. It was so wide, most people didn’t even know it was a bridge. And then there was a massive, dangerous roundabout right on top, which gained the nickname Suicide Circle.
Then a post office was built on top of where the rivers met. The hurricane barrier was built off Fox Point, the highways were built, and ramps from the highways completely blocked what little access still remained to the water. The rivers were now pretty much completely out of sight.
By the 1970s, Providence’s textile industry, its machine tool industry, and even the jewelry industry had declined. Downtown was effectively dead. Picture just parking lots everywhere. The last movie palace (or movie theater) closed in 1976, the last hotel shut down, and the last department store left in ‘82. The State House was separated from the downtown by elevated railroad tracks and parking lots. And people just didn’t have a good reason to go into downtown. In 1983, the Wall Street Journal famously called Providence “a smudge on the road from New York to Cape Cod.” And people saw the city as a “gritty wasteland of neglected waterways, derelict railroad yards, and vast parking lots.”
So, what changed? Because this Providence I’m describing, it’s nothing like the Providence of today that you’ll experience if you go to WaterFire. This Providence was a wasteland.
You’re probably waiting for me to say, here’s where Buddy comes into the picture. And, yes, Providence’s most famous mayor, Vincent Buddy Cianci Jr., who coined the name “The Renaissance City,” surely had his role in the renewal of Providence. But, it’s not as simple as that. It was a complex web of evolving policies, tenacious individuals with good ideas they refused to give up on, and federal and state funding that led to the success of what became known as the River Relocation Project. And then a mayor who believed in the vision was the cherry on top.
I couldn’t possibly describe all the politicking that went into the Providence Renaissance, but, at a high level, the River Relocation Project was achieved through a blending of three separate capital construction projects that evolved together throughout the ‘80s and ‘90s. The first two addressed the railroad infrastructure that had come to define the city and the third addressed the rivers. First, there was the federally funded Northeast Corridor Project, designed to fix up railroad tracks and stations serving Amtrak trains between Boston and DC. But, in Providence, that project was interrupted to pursue a more ambitious one, called the Capital Center Plan. Studies showed that fixing the existing tracks was comparable to relocating them, and Buddy Cianci championed this new plan which would do more to revitalize downtown. He negotiated with federal officials who agreed to invest instead in moving the tracks and burying them beneath the State House lawn, freeing up space for development and creating beautiful grassy areas leading up to the State House. It would also create a new interchange with I-95, a new arterial road in the city, and a one-acre Waterplace park which was inspired by the old Great Salt Cove (though it is much smaller - again, check out those maps).
There were a lot of reasons to believe in this plan, but there were also some shortcomings. It would result in increased traffic flowing into the city, particularly into the already dangerous Suicide Circle. And, the plan didn’t really address the hidden rivers.
That’s where the third project comes in. This one was proposed by architect William Warner, and it was called the River Relocation Plan.
As the name suggests, this plan proposed uncovering the rivers by physically moving them out from under the buildings that had been built over them. When it was initially proposed, it was derisively called the Moses Plan. Buddy Cianci remembered this contempt in his memoir: “Uncovering the rivers was one of those big concepts I embraced and supported. There were many people who ridiculed the idea, pointing out that we were Providence, Rhode Island–not Venice. To those people, the possibility that gondolas would one day float gracefully along the Providence River was about as likely as Providence one day being named one of America’s “Most Liveable Cities.””
But, as you know, both of those things happened. This plan also removed Suicide Circle and the World’s Widest Bridge. It rewove streets and added a number of smaller bridges over the river that were inspired by Venetian archways, and it created 11 acres of walkways and parks for people to enjoy along the river.
Though the project was accomplished through the hard work of many dedicated people, Buddy Cianci became a symbol of the city’s spirit of renewal. In “Providence, the Renaissance City,” the authors describe Buddy as a “civic booster who almost single handedly marketed the city and served as a bellwether for its populations’ burgeoning collective self-esteem.”
Buddy promoted the newly restored riverfront throughout his long mayoral career. When Waterplace Park was dedicated, he moored his yacht at India Point and cruised up the river in his dingy, something which would have been impossible to do before. A small fleet of gondolas was brought in, really giving the city a Venetian look. But Barnaby Evans still felt like the riverfront was a blank canvas. He said the river project “didn't have a soul to it —there was no reason for people to come to see the new river park that resulted.” So, in 1994, he proposed an idea for a display of fire on the newly revealed river that he believed would populate and animate the new space. Buddy was intrigued, but not convinced it would appeal to the public like Evans thought. But, he gave Evans a chance, and the first installation was lit by the mayor on New Years Eve.
Later, Cianci would remember, “The natural beauty of fire, smoke, and water at night entranced spectators beyond anyone’s imagination. People just kept talking about it. It was anti-technological art… a performance that could have been staged exactly the same way hundreds of years earlier–people in rowboats gliding along a river at night lighting beacon fires.”
I remember going to WaterFire with my parents when I was a kid, and I thought Providence was such a magical place. I thought about that when I was applying for college, and it’s honestly why I’m here today. So, I have a special place for WaterFire in my heart. I think that if you live around here long enough, you start to take it for granted a little bit. The rivers, the fires, the sights and sounds, but we shouldn’t. It’s kind of a miracle it all came together. There are a lot of cities across the country that are faded and run down. And a comeback, like the one Providence had, it can seem impossible. Of course, it’s not all downhill from here. But, today, I’m proud of this weird little city in a weird little state.
I hate to quote Buddy Cianci again in this episode, but darn it, he gave some good speeches! Looking back at the River Relocation and the revitalization of downtown, he said, “We have moved more than railroad tracks and rivers. We have moved the entire heart and soul of a city.”
Thanks for listening! And a special thank you to Jeff and Abbie for suggesting this week’s episode. As always, all episodes are written and researched by me, Sara Corben. If you liked this one, I would love it if you could share it with your family or friends. Maybe share it with someone who’s coming to visit Providence or someone who’s forgotten how impressive WaterFire really is. And if there’s a topic you’d really like to hear about, you can always send me a note at Weird Rhode Island at Gmail.com. See you next week as we dig up more stories about all things weird and wonderful in the little state of Rhode Island. Until next time!