Weird Island

51. STRANGE STREETS: The Mystery of Ridge St. and Pidge Ave.

Episode Summary

On the border of Providence and Pawtucket, there’s a strange intersection. One single road changes its name from Ridge Street to Pidge Avenue. With Ridge and Pidge being just one letter apart, it always seemed like a mistake. With the help of Providence Journal reporter Paul Parker, we get to the bottom of the mystery. And uncover another one along the way. To Visit: Intersection of Pidge Avenue and East Avenue, Pawtucket, RI Pidge Tavern was at 586 Pawtucket Avenue

Episode Notes

Episode Description:

To Visit:

Intersection of Pidge Avenue and East Avenue, Pawtucket, RI
Pidge Tavern was at 586 Pawtucket Avenue

Episode Source Material

Episode Transcription

Right on the border of Providence and Pawtucket, over by Hope Street and the Boulevard, there’s this noteworthy intersection. Well, at least, it’s noteworthy if you’re me, because this intersection has been driving me crazy for years. And it’s not that it’s poorly designed or anything like that. It’s much more… inconsequential. What’s unusual is that on one side, there’s this road called Ridge Street, and it comes up to the intersection and then continues on on the other side, as streets do at an intersection. But here’s where things get a little wonky. Because on the other side, as the street continues on down a hill towards North Main, it’s no longer Ridge Street. Suddenly, it’s transformed into Pidge Avenue.
And there’s a stoplight at this intersection, so I’ll often find myself stopped, staring at the street signs on either side wondering who messed that up. Because there’s no way someone intentionally named one half of this road Ridge and the other half Pidge! It just has to be a mistake. Like maybe someone ordered the wrong street sign for one side? Or miswrote it on a map at one point? Or something like that. But I just had to get to the bottom of the mystery.
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 this week, I’m bringing you an investigative story you didn’t know you needed. Today’s episode is a Sherlock Holmes esq detective thriller, the Mysterious Case of Ridge Street and Pidge Avenue.
(Ringing) Hi, this is Paul Parker. Hi, Paul. This is Sara Corben. How are you?
Just like in every great work of detective fiction, we needed a hero for this story. Our very own version of Sherlock Holmes. Maybe some brilliant but eccentric investigator who would do whatever it took to get to the bottom of the story. Or, perhaps, a seasoned reporter for the Providence Journal, with 35 years of experience piecing stories like this one back together.
It’s a blast tracking stuff like this down.
I enlisted Paul’s help because a couple of years ago, he tackled this question of Ridge and Pidge that it seems no one had looked into before.
I live in Pawtucket, and for years I’ve driven past the intersection of East Avenue with Pidge Avenue and Ridge Street and noticed the two signs and with the names being different by just a P and and R, it always seemed like a typo to me. And I always wondered about that. But then, a couple of years ago, the journal had a feature that invited readers to send us questions about why things are the way they are in Rhode Island. And one reader sent in the question about what was up with these two street names, so I finally got paid to find out whether this was a typo or not.
So, Paul was on the job. Perhaps, like detectives of old, he donned a tweed suit, a long traveling cloak, an ear-flapped traveling cap and maybe even a pipe. And then he started his research where all great detectives do. He opened up a browser, and started googling.
Pidge being a very unusual word, it wasn’t very hard to track down stories about it.
It was fairly basic research of city records, land records and city council records, to trace the history of Pidge Avenue.
And that’s how I learned about the Pidge Tavern…
And the Pidge Family, who eventually owned the building. And made a subdivision that became a road and eventually became Pidge Avenue.
Okay, so investigative work isn’t always tracking people down, or showing up announced where someone might be. But just you wait, because there’s some of that coming.
It turns out that the Pidge Avenue piece of the puzzle was relatively easy to put together. Because the name Pidge was tied to this tavern that existed in what’s now Pawtucket for literally hundreds of years.
The tavern is believed to have been built around 1641, just five years after Roger Williams established Providence. It was essentially a home where the owner got a license to open a public ale house. And this was a great choice, because the house and tavern were located along a very important road that would be known as the Old Boston Post Road (today, this is North Main Street). So anyone traveling from Boston through Rhode Island to CT or NY would pass right by. And the alehouse became a regular stopping place.
Over the years, the tavern changed hands. By 1769, it came into the possession of Jeremiah Sayles, and became known as the Sayles Tavern. Maybe you’ve heard that name before. I’d heard it in the Case of Charles Dexter Ward, by H. P. Lovecraft.
Later, Sayles deeded the house to his daughter Abby, who married a man named Ira Pidge. And the tavern changed names yet again from the Sayles Tavern to the Pidge Tavern or Pidge House. Later, Abby and Ira’s son James would establish a dairy farm there. And by the mid 1860s, some of the land that included the tavern and house and the farm had been subdivided, so a street ran from Pawtucket Avenue all the way up to East Avenue. This street was named after the family and tavern. It was called Pidge Avenue.
So, with some basic digging, Paul had half of the story put together. Now he just had to figure out the other half. And to do that, he headed to Pawtucket City Hall, where the deputy city clerk jumped in to help.
The deputy city clerk who helped me with the research, city clerks tend to be people who are into the history of the place that they serve, and they’re the guardians of that history, or at least the documentarians of that history, so she was as intrigued as I and I don’t remember if I asked her, but I imagine she always wondered about Pidge and Ridge, so she was as interested in finding the answer as I was.
She ushered Paul through a door that led to an archive and an old metal card catalog with one drawer labeled “Street Index.” Flipping through cards, they found one for Pidge Avenue. And on it, there was a note stating that a part of the street was renamed Ridge Street on May 10, 1916 at a meeting of the Pawtucket Board of Alderman.
There was references to the Board of Alderman, back then, Pawtucket had a bicameral city legislature. But the Board of Alderman had acted on changing the name of what had been the separated part of Pidge Avenue to Ridge Street, and there was a report filed by the city engineer, and that report was still in the archives. I was able to read that and find out about his thinking and look through various subdivision plans that had been submitted for the area.
So, it turns out there was no mistake. The city intentionally chose to name half of Pidge Avenue Ridge Street. But why? What reason could that city engineer have offered for the change? Paul followed the deputy city clerk back to her office, where she went into a vault where supporting documents for board meetings were filed by topic. And she came back out with a letter from the city engineer to the Board of Alderman, explaining his recommendation.
Part of the reason for being for changing names at East Avenue because the Pidge Avenue existed in two parts for some of its history and it was separated by some land that was wrapped up in probate essentially for a number of years. And when that was cleared up, they fixed the street, but by then, the part of Pidge Avenue that was separate from the main part of Pidge Avenue had a different name of Ridge Street. And when they extended Ridge Street all the way to East Avenue, they kept the name of Ridge Street, rather than reverting to Pidge Avenue, which you might argue the entire street should be called Pidge Avenue.
So, basically, the street didn’t always connect. There was a piece of land in between.
When they chose the name Ridge Street, which actually had been the name of a street that was proposed of a subdivision that was near what became Ridge Street, but the originally Ridge Street was never built, but when they chose the name Ridge Street, it didn’t connect to Pidge Avenue, so there wasn’t necessarily anything to be confused about. And there was a large parcel of land in between that was privately owned, and it probably never occurred to them at the time that the two streets would ever be connected.
But that’s exactly what happened. And it means that today, we have the delightfully confusing intersection where Ridge Street becomes Pidge Avenue. Mystery solved.
But if you think this is the end of the story, well, guess again. Because it was really only the beginning for me. And for Paul as well.
I had never heard the story of the Pidge Tavern before, never heard a single mention of it until I started looking into this story.
Neither had I. (heard of Pidge)
But what I already shared with you. It’s really only half of the building’s history.
It had been appreciated for quite some time. It was known to be the oldest building in RI.
But it wasn’t just that this was an old building. There are some pretty incredible historical moments that happened at this tavern.
The first took place in April of 1776. Almost exactly one year earlier, on April 19, 1775, colonial militiamen from Boston clashed with British soldiers in the Battles of Lexington and Concord in Massachusetts, marking the “shot heard round the world” that signified the start of the Revolutionary War. Throughout the fall and winter of that year, George Washington’s forces struggled to keep the British contained in Boston. But in March of 1776, the British evacuated the city and prepared for a major invasion of NY. Washington wrote to Congress with news of the British evacuation. And on April 4, he left Cambridge, MA with a regiment of the army, and headed to New York.
Word spread that General George Washington would be traveling from Boston through Pawtucket to Providence and on April 5, people gathered at what was then called the Sayles Tavern, where General Nathaneal Greene and RI Governor Nicholas Cooke met Washington with several units of troops. From the tavern, the group paraded into Providence. In town, there was “a great concourse of people. Many having come a number of miles to have a sight of his excellency,” according to an April 6 Providence Gazette article.
So, this was a big moment. But it isn’t the tavern’s only claim to fame.
Throughout the war, the Americans were generally facing an enemy that was better-trained, better equipped and more experienced. They needed help, and they got it from France. At first, the French king shipped only supplies and money. But in 1779, a French aristocrat and military officer known as the Marquis de Lafayette, who had commissioned as a major general and become a member of George Washington’s staff, returned to France and was instrumental in securing French troops to fight for the American cause. Lafayette’s news of French aid greatly improved American morale when it was most needed.
In the summer of 1780, General Rochambeau and thousands of French troops arrived in Newport, and began an occupation that lasted nearly a year as they awaited more troops.
And Lafayette also returned to RI, to meet up with Rochambeau, but he was stationed in Providence, instead of Newport. Or more specifically, he was headquartered at the Sayles Tavern, where he lived in a small room for a number of weeks. From the tavern, Lafayette wrote heated letters to Rochambeau, impatiently calling for action. And Washington actually personally wrote to and counseled Lafayette to be patient.
In June of 1781, the French army embarked for Providence, where they met at the Sayles Tavern before marching through CT to NY to meet the American army. They then turned to the south, with the goal of attacking British troops under Lord Charles Cornwallis at Yorktown, VA. Lafayette and his men surrounded the British force at Yorktown, holding them until reinforced by Washington. Together, they initiated the siege that led to the British surrender and an end to the war. The victory at Yorktown was the last significant mainland battle of the American Revolution, and without the assistance of the French, the outcome of the war might have been different.
After the British defeat at Yorktown, the French troops made their way back to Providence, and General Rochambeau set up camp at Dexter Farm for three weeks while awaiting ships to transport them back to France.
Years later, in 1824, Lafayette would return to the US and visit the Sayles Tavern where he had stayed. At the time, Abby Sayles Pidge had just given birth, days before, to a son. And she named him Lafayette Pidge after the famous military officer.
Later, the tavern would serve another important role. As a stop on the Underground Railroad, and that deserves its own full episode.
Normally, this would be the part of the podcast where I tell you where to go to visit this incredibly historical place. But, that’s not possible in this story.
The Pidge family owned the house and tavern until 1901, when it was sold to a Mr. Ballou of Providence. Ballou sold the house to the railroad company five years later, and people feared the railroad would tear down the building, which had begun falling into a state of disrepair. But that didn’t happen. In 1922, Granville Standish, a descendent of the founder of Plymouth, purchased the house and tried to preserve it so it could be opened to the public. And in an August 1922 Providence Journal article, the author wrote that the house, “If preserved, will become a shrine from which rays of patriotism will radiate into the hearts of our future generations.” But Standish was never able to realize his vision. In 1953, both Standish and his son and heir died within a month of one another. And Standish’s business partners built two large billboards in front of the historic building. “Behind the billboards,” The Providence Journal reported, “The stout frame structure is falling in ruins.” By 1961, the Journal reported that the building had been swept away by wrecking crews.
When Paul Parker wrote his story about the Pidge and Ridge mystery, he reported that the house and tavern were long gone. But then, he started getting some emails.
Well I got emails from several readers who told me that when the Pidge Tavern was torn down, parts of the interior were salvaged, and depending on which reader had emailed me, said it still existed or had existed in an office building near India Point at some point.
Could that possibly be true? Paul, being the detective that he is, had to find out.
And part of my motivation was I had written and told the world that it no longer existed, and now I had reason to believe that what I wrote wasn’t true, so I had to correct the record. But also, I was intrigued to think that this piece of history that again, dated back to George Washington and earlier, might still be around earlier. So, I decided to start tracking that down.
And while that involved some of the same investigative techniques, such as genealogical research and land evidence research, this one was much closer to actual detective work, which is something I do frequently in the newspaper business. This involved talking to people who might have known something about it, finding out what they knew, find out who else knew the information. Tracking those people down. So it really felt like I was the protagonist in a detective novel as I started researching this.
Like before, Paul began his research with Archival information. He found an October 1977 advertisement for executive office space “adjacent to off- and on-ramps at I-195 at Gano Street, India Point, Providence.” And the advertisement mentioned the following, “Office features historic pine paneling, beams and working fireplace from Original Pidge House Tavern (circa 1640)” So, Paul called the number on that 1970s advertisement. And surprisingly someone picked up. And against all odds, she was able to get him in touch with the leasing manager who placed the ad at the time.
And the leasing manager confirmed that parts of the interior of the taproom were carefully removed and installed in the offices of Granville Standish’s outdoor advertising company, in the executive office of the president. Within years of that happening, the company had closed its offices in Rhode Island and in 1962, the office building was torn down and replaced with a hotel. But the leasing officer offered up one final great clue. He said that a man named Richard Deeble was president when the office was decorated with the paneling. And he believed that when the building was torn down, the historic wood was taken out by Deeble’s son-in-law, a man by the name of Robert Brown. So, Paul pressed on with his investigation, with a glimmer of hope that the pieces of the tavern might still be out there.
There were two characters who made it hard to get in touch with them. Mr. Geake, who was the Pawtucket historian. We had a very brief exchange by email, and he promised to get in touch with me, but never did. And so I tracked him down to a lecture he was giving in East Greenwich and just showed up one day and started asking him questions. And that gave me a few more clues.
And also there was this curious Stephanie Blue, who told me when I reached her that she was a relative of Robert Brown, who had been an executive with the company that supposedly at one point had the remnants of Pidge Tavern set up in their executive offices, and she also said she would get back to me and never did. So I found out where she lived, kind of in the backwoods of Coventry, and drove down there. And it was an appropriately mysterious and misty day. And they lived on a farm, although they don’t really do much farming there. But you kind of come over this hill through the woods and it's a dirt road that leads to their driveway, and their driveway is a dirt road, and you crest the hill and see there’s a small village or compound down at the foot of the hill and I saw some smoke coming out of the chimney of one of the buildings and met her husband and met her and eventually her son.
And it was her son, Remington, who eventually led Paul down a set of wooden stairs into a basement with high ceilings and blue-green walls. He pointed to some sheets of plywood leaning up against a back corner of the room, and when he pulled the plywood out of the way, Paul finally stood face to face with the wood paneling he had searched all over Rhode Island to find.
Fortunately, the owner of the billboard company appreciated it at least aesthetically and moved some of the paneling to decorate his office, and moved it to the office building that was at India Point. That building’s no longer there. It’s a hotel. And his offspring also appreciated that this was an important part of history, so they kept it, but they didn’t quite know what to do with it, so it’s sitting in a basement.
And ironically the house that it’s in now almost burned down at one point. There was a serious fire there. Don’t know whether the pieces were in there when the fire happened or not. But you can still see the singe marks on the wall from when the fire happened.
So, roughly 380 years after the tavern was initially built, something of it still remains. Tucked away in a basement. Being cared for by people who see the historical value in what, at the end of the day, are just some pieces of very old wood.
This story ended up being so much more than anyone could have imagined. Full of twists and turns that I couldn’t have shared with you if it weren’t for Paul Parker’s incredible detective work and reporting. Thank you for what you do, Paul!
The tavern may no longer be there on Pidge Avenue, but the streets themselves continue to tell a story. Of course, there’s Pidge and Ridge, but beside Pidge is Lafayette Street. And there’s Rochambeau Avenue. And Camp Street, which commemorates the French soldiers who were encamped there. Sometimes we take things like street names for granted, not realizing the story and history they’re telling all around us.
If you know the stories of the streets around you, the one you live on. The ones you walk or drive. I’d love to hear them. As always, thank you so much for listening! And a HUGE thank you to Paul Parker for investigating and reporting on this story and sharing that research with me. Check out his two pieces linked in the show notes.
If you liked this episode, I would love it if you could share it with your family and friends. And if you have an idea for an episode, I’d love to hear it! You can email me at weird rhode island @ gmail.com or find me on Instagram at weird Island podcast. 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!