Weird Island

8. ONE PROVIDENCE PLACE: The Secret Apartment in the Mall

Episode Summary

Wouldn’t it be great if you could live in the mall? Well, in the early 2000s, a group of Providence artists secretly did. To Visit: Providence Place Mall | 1 Providence Place, Providence, RI 02903 | Don’t go expecting to find the apartment, though.

Episode Notes

Episode Source Material:

History of the Providence Place Mall:

History of American Malls:

The People Living in Providence Place:

Episode Transcription

Hi! You’re listening to Weird Island, and I’m your host, Sara. Each week I’ll be telling you about the strangest stories I can dig up, from my tiny little state of Rhode Island. This week, I’ll be reminiscing about the mall, and that time those people were living in Providence Place.
It’s 1993, and mayor Buddy Cianci, alongside Joseph Paolino and Governor Bruce Sundland are on a plane, flying out to Seattle, Washington. They’re on their way to meet with the Nordstrom family, to convince them to open a store in Providence, in what was seen as a dying New England city. And, somehow, it works.
Nordstrom becomes the anchor store of the Providence Place mall--the final piece of Buddy’s Providence Renaissance, intended to shepherd in the return of retail to the city, revitalize the urban center, create new jobs, and generate tax revenue. The mall was predicted to draw in at least 15 million shoppers a year, keeping Rhode Island’s retail dollars within the state and attracting visitors from neighboring MA and CT. And they needed this Nordstrom--which would only be the 2nd in New England--to make those numbers happen, especially because the mall would be the most expensive development project in the history of Rhode Island -- costing nearly $500MM.
While it promised economic development, the construction of a massive mall in the middle of the city was controversial. This would be a unique experiment in public/private partnership between developers and taxpayers, and the state needed it to work. A mall is also an inherently suburban structure--sprawling in scale, with all the design aesthetic of a shoebox, and typically surrounded by expansive parking lots. How would that fit harmoniously within Providence’s downtown?
Construction broke on land that once occupied the first State Prison, and later housed the University of Rhode Island’s College of Continuing Education before becoming Ray’s Park & Lock--a massive, dirt parking lot. In the early days of the project, prison cells were unearthed that had been buried since the late 1800s.
The building that was constructed stretches over an Amtrak line and the Woonasquatucket River, and was designed to imitate a city block. Initially, a large dome was spec’d into the design, intended to match the capital building, but it was later replaced with a long glass vault running above the food court and over the river.
Malls were just past their peak when Providence Place opened in 1999, but they weren’t in a freefall yet. A survey of RI shoppers taken just a year after Providence Place opened reported that a huge 15% of people had shopped online in the previous six months--compare that to today, with the number closer to 70% and you’ll understand how much more vital brick and mortar retail was at the time.
Providence’s relationship with the mall has always been complicated. It’s a center focal point in downtown. It did bring shoppers and retail dollars and jobs into the city. But people weren’t entirely sure how to feel about it. The structure itself was flawed--the flow of pedestrian traffic within the mall was challenged. Elevators were hard to find, escalators were only at the far ends of the mall, requiring visitors to walk in big, looping circles past every store. And the parking garage was beyond confusing. Many loved it, but just as many weren’t sure how to feel about this massive temple of capitalism.
And as the city grappled with this mixture of excitement and love and distaste for the mall, a group of young artists approached their own complex emotions by making the mall their home. Michael Townsend lived in an apartment near where the mall was being constructed, and during his daily jogs, he watched as disconnected pieces of metal and scaffolding rose up to form a skeleton, and then as the body of the mall wrapped around the skeleton, he identified an area of dead space locked up in the center--space that seemed to have no purpose. During the construction of the mall, it was used to store lumber and supplies, but what would it be once the mall was complete?
Providence Place opened in 1999. In 2003, the mall began running Christmastime radio ads playing on the childhood dream: “Wouldn’t it be great if you could live in the mall?” they asked. This got Townsend thinking about his own relationship with the mall and the role the structure played in his life. It was then that he and his wife and two others decided to try something. They challenged themselves to spend a full week living inside the mall. Each brought $20 and voted on an “if-you-were-stranded-on-a-desert-island” item. Their selections included a flashlight, a sketchbook, a foil car blanket and a washcloth.
During that time, Townsend explained, "I felt this vacation-like euphoria that I've never felt till then or since then." But he wasn’t just chasing that feeling, he was also looking for something--he wanted to find that unusual spot he had noticed during the mall’s construction. And he found it.
Deep in the center of the mall, beneath an I-beam and above an unused storage room, was the 750 square foot block of dead space--that clearly hadn’t been used since the building was constructed. It was littered with the remnants of the build out: lumber, nails, trash and scraps that hadn’t been worth the time to clean up. The space Townsend had wondered about--it had never been turned into anything. It was abandoned and forgotten, by all but one person. The space was accessible--both from within the mall’s parking structure, and from the outside of the mall. There were two cinder block walls, separated by a 2ft wide gap that created a narrow passage into and out of the building. Before long, the week-long experiment had morphed into something else. Townsend and the others decided to transform the space into an apartment, hidden inside the mall.
First, they had to clean it up. They loaded up backpacks and trekked in and out, carrying out trash and bringing supplies in, down the narrow passage that led to the room. Townsend describes the passageway, saying, “At some points it narrows to about eleven inches. The ceiling is of varying heights, and at one point the passage turns into a ledge as one of the walls to the side abruptly disappears; this reveals a gaping, cavernous, empty space.” It was through this terrifying space that they carried cinder blocks, one by one, which they used to build a wall to enclose the apartment--complete with a nondescript utility door that matched the doors in the parking garage. If anyone found the room, it would look perfectly normal, like any utility closet.
Once they got it cleaned up, they started to bring furniture in. Eventually the space would hold a sectional sofa, a love seat, a coffee table, a breakfast table with four chairs, lamps, a rug and a china hutch. And if you’re wondering, no they did not carry those down the narrow passage, but brought them in through the mall and up a ladder into the space. They ran a power cord from a storage closet to supply the room with electricity, but the room was never heated and had no running water. For bathrooms, they relied on the mall’s facilities. The group had a long-term goal of making the apartment fully functioning--with its own plumbing, and Townsend wanted to live in the space for a full year, getting a job at Nordstrom or Brooks Brothers, and showering and working out at the hotel connected to the mall. On his site, Trummerkind, Townsend writes that his goal was to “let the mall define who we were on our path to becoming the ultimate mall citizens.” But the build out took a while. Between 2003 and 2007--four years--the group of artists lived in the apartment for up to three weeks at a time without being caught. They were days away from installing wood flooring, and weeks away from realizing their plumbing solution, when things fell apart.
Townsend had brought a visiting artist to see the spot, breaking his own rule about keeping the apartment a secret, when he heard the sounds of walkie-talkies outside the door. He knew immediately that it was all over. Townsend was apprehended by security, and sentenced to 6-months probation and barred for life from the mall.
The Providence Place Mall wasn’t amused by the apartment, but Providence Police Major Stephen Campbell and other detectives were so intrigued, they had to go check it out for themselves. And in the wake of his apprehension and banishment, Townsend started receiving letters from people--who were impressed with what he had and the others had done. People loved hearing that someone had done it--someone had actualized the dream of living in the mall.
Maybe kids today don’t have this dream, but growing up in the ‘90s, I certainly did! When I was in fifth grade, everyone had to do an end of the year project--the Fifth Grade Book--where they had to write a story and put it together like it was a real book. They were judged in two categories--self-illustrated or non-illustrated--and there was an overall winner across both categories. And while I was oddly confident that my book was a masterpiece, I remember having this horrible, sinking feeling when I saw what one of my classmates had done--they had written a story about being locked inside a store, and they had actually gotten permission to take photos in the store after hours, with no-one in there, showing all the adventures and trouble they described getting in to. That was it--in that moment, I knew I couldn’t win the overall prize, because there was no concept as cool as spending a night locked inside a store.
I think the prevalence of this fantasy is interesting. Why do kids and even adults think the idea of living in a store or mall is magical? Is it just marketing? Is it nostalgia? Or does it have to do with the structure of the mall itself?
In 1956, Victor Gruen created the first enclosed mall in the US, the Southdale Mall in Edina, Minnesota. Prior to Southdale, malls operated like traditional store-lined streets, with entrances facing out. But Gruen had a vision that would become the American mall as we know it today--an inward facing mall, with a square, fountains, trees, and more in the center. The idea was to recreate the pedestrian and community experience of European cities in the suburbs of America. And in places like Minnesota, this experience worked best inside--air conditioned in the summer and heated in the winter.
But this wasn’t a casual endeavor. Gruen had a larger goal in mind, driven by his aversion to American suburbs, which he described as, “avenues of horror … flanked by the greatest collection of vulgarity — billboards, motels, gas stations, shanties, car lots, miscellaneous industrial equipment, hot dog stands, wayside stores — ever collected by mankind.” He was troubled to see how isolated people were becoming in the sprawling suburban landscape.
Gruen wasn’t just trying to create a shopping center. Initially, the Southdale Mall was intended to have stores, yes, but also apartments, schools, medical buildings, a park and a lake. He wanted to build an enclosed society--one without cars, because Gruen said, “their threat to human life and health is just as great as the exposed sewer.” So the mall was intended to be the perfect, enclosed, healthy, clean, safe car-free community.
But, of course, that didn’t end up happening. In an article titled, “The strange, surprisingly radical roots of the shopping mall,” Stephen Johnson writes that instead of providing an antidote to suburban sprawl, the mall became an amplifier.
But still, the mall was seen as the new town square in a way. Just, people weren’t living there. The Association for Consumer Research still described them as places, “free from bad weather, life, crime, dirt and troubles.”
And maybe that’s why people have this fantasy of living in them--they can still feel the presence of the ghost of what might have been, these perfectly pristine communities where life could be better than it really was. And with displays showing beautifully designed interior spaces and advertisements telling you about how great your home could look, it’s kind of like the Instagram effect of today--the mall or the department store is aspirational, but it’s not actually a place you’d want to live. It’s a store.
Of course, we all know how the American mall is doing today--not well. Mall construction peaked in 1990 and has been declining ever since. Ironically, many dead malls are now being converted into something that looks a lot like Gruen’s original vision, with residences, stores, restaurants, and parks. I wonder what Gruen would have to say about that? “I am often called the father of the shopping mall,” he said, two years before his death in 1978. “I would like to take this opportunity to disclaim paternity once and for all. I refuse to pay alimony to those bastard developments. They destroyed our cities.” Would Gruen now welcome back this prodigal son?
Rhode Island has a unique heritage when it comes to malls. It’s home to the earliest example of a closed shopping center in the United States. The Providence Arcade, built in 1828, was a predecessor to Gruen’s Southdale Center. Featuring two beautiful street-facing entrances with Greek temple fronts, and three floors of stores, this historic shopping center became a centerpiece of retail on Westminster street. Today, it still contains a few restaurants and stores, but it also has 48 residential units. And I always see these “Only in Your State” articles about it, with titles like, “You can now live inside America’s first Shopping Mall” that get tons of shares on social, because even though the mall is suffering, people are still drawn to the idea of living inside one.
Ironically, when Townsend was caught leaving the secret apartment in Providence Place, security would describe the space as little more than “an area with stuff in it.” They didn’t feel this 750-square-foot space qualified as an apartment. But that seems palatial compared to the 225-to-450 square foot micro-lofts in the Arcade. So, what makes a place an apartment? Or what makes a place a home?
Adrianna Yoto, Townsend’s wife, was asked how long they had intended to stay in the mall apartment. Her response was, "Years. Forever. We wanted to bring our child to have its birthday there. We wanted to have the baby's first steps in the mall."
I went to a mall recently, after my parents mentioned that the one by them was closing. It was a rainy Sunday, so we just walked the mall to see what was still there, waiting for that lightheadedness and shopping fatigue to set in. I was amazed by the sales. Every store seemed to be offering 40-50% off, including a Sears which was days away from shuttering. Little more than the fixtures and a whole segment of suits remained. We stood in front of them, wondering if it was a smart idea to invest in office attire now or if office culture would be changed entirely by the time we were back in one. It made me feel a little sad. I have a lot of great memories of going to the mall as a kid. Eating A&W mini corn dogs with my brother, crying one day when we went just for that reason and the frialator was broken. Going to Borders and picking up my first sci-fi book. But of course Borders has been long gone. For many people in my generation, the mall was full of firsts. Paco Underhill, author of “Call of the Mall,” writes, that for many, the mall was “first place they spent their own money, the first place they met somebody who wasn't in their neighborhood, the first time they saw things from music to fashion that, previous to that, their only connection to it had been on TV." People sometimes say the mall is a place to escape reality, but maybe that’s not true. Maybe it’s a place to imagine the reality we want for ourselves. And maybe money can buy it, but probably it can’t.
Thanks for listening! If you liked this episode, please leave a rating or review, or you can send me a note at Weird Rhode Island at Gmail.com. And if there’s a topic you’d really like to hear about, let me know! 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!