Revolutions: American and Industrial

In the decade before the Revolutionary War, British enforcement of revenue laws in Newport Harbor and Narragansett Bay provoked resistance, including the 1769 burning of a British sloop by Newport citizens. The aggressive schooner Gaspee compelled vessels to strike their flags and submit to customs boarding, but on June 9, 1772, Captain Benjamin Lindsay of the packet Hannah refused, was fired upon, and led the pursuing Gaspee aground near Namquit Point. After reaching Providence, Lindsay informed John Brown, Welcome Arnold, and others, and a crowd of merchants and sea captains gathered at James Sabin's Tavern before setting out in eight longboats from Fenner's Wharf to the stranded vessel. The colonists surprised the British, fired shots, boarded the schooner, put its crew ashore, and burned the Gaspee, then returned to Providence before daybreak. British authorities, outraged, offered rewards and created a commission to investigate, but no colonist cooperated, and despite the participation of as many as 60 to 100 men, no one in Providence identified the attackers. The burning of the Gaspee and similar acts of defiance became an impetus to the American Revolution. In Providence, industry, trade, and commerce later took root on the East Bank with the establishment of the Custom House, and by the end of the 1700s South Main Street's west side held dwellings, gardens, stores, and wharves. A great fire in 1801 and the Great Gale of 1815 devastated the area, but rebuilding followed each disaster. By 1822, the Crawford Allen Brick store reflected renewed commercial vitality, and within two blocks stood major participants in Providence's industrial growth, including the Tingley and Brothers Steam Marble Works, the Browne and Sharpe machine shop, the Palmer and Capron jewelry shop, the Fuller Iron Works, the Providence Steam Engine Company, and the Gorham Manufacturing Company. Prosperity changed the neighborhood's population, and by the late 1830s many local residents were boarders working as stonecutters, machinists, and jewelry workers rather than property owners. By the 1880s, earlier firms had departed and fuel and chemical companies moved in, with 11 of Providence's 25 chemical manufacturers prospering on the East Bank because of its labor supply and shipping access. The smells, dilapidated buildings, and less desirable trades again left the district in disrepair, and since the Civil War the East Bank has undergone repeated cycles of industrial growth, transition, prosperity, and collapse.

Providence, Rhode Island · United States