Providence : Uncovered

Names matter. They hold meaning, both obvious and hidden. Road signs, bus marquees, neighborhoods, mailboxes, banners, advertising slogans, cartoons. We walk past street names every day, often neglecting them a second glance. While serving a practical need, these names are also commemorative landscapes in their own right, operating as cultural markers of a community’s pulse.

Street names are manifestations of a city’s history, politics, culture, and ideology. They give our city personality, offer us a tool of navigation, contribute to our sense of place and identity, and mark our homes. But how often do we consider what our street is named for? Street names legitimize and often celebrate historic figures, pivotal events and historic landmarks, but they also obscure uncomfortable and painful pasts.

In examining these streets, we acknowledge that Providence, Rhode Island is the ancestral homeland of the Narragansett peoples. Beginning with colonization and continuing for centuries, the Narragansett Tribe and other indigenous peoples have been dispossessed from their lands by the actions of individuals and institutions. In showing the origins of the selected street names, we hope to think critically about how we choose to name and immortalize the world around us.

How this project started:

I lived in Providence, RI from 1986-1994. During that time, a poster/postcard by Mad Peck was in many storefronts along Thayer Street: a simple black and white cartoonish postcard referencing some of the street names in Providence with witty one-liners. My friends and I found it so clever and when I moved across the country to Los Angeles, one even gave me a framed copy of the larger version which I still have today. The postcard was iconic but at that time I knew very little about its creator.

Beginning in 2020, I had the opportunity (and excuse) to frequent Providence more often as my daughter was starting college there. One day, on a visit, I was staying at the Hope Club just down the street from main campus. I was meeting my daughter for lunch and set out to walk. I walked down Benevolent Street and looked up at the street sign at the crosswalk. It said Bannister Street. I had never heard of this street despite my many years of school there. This piqued my curiosity and I snapped a photo of it to look into later. This one block long street had been renamed from Mcgee Street in 2017.

And so this “project” began. Every visit to Providence, I would set out on foot and walk and take photos of the street signs: Benefit, Benevolent, Power, Hope, etc.. and then dive into the history by visiting Providence City Archives and RI Historical Society in search of primary sources. In early 2022, I had photographed nearly all the streets I wanted to but was having a hard time getting all the histories as the libraries and archive collections had limited hours (covid rules.) So, I decided to scour Brown’s website and see if I could find a graduate student that might be interested in working with me. I read bios and emailed one: Hilary Bergen in Public Humanities. We set up a zoom and “met” and she started working with me on finding the historical notes.

Hilary and I met over lunches at Kabob and Curry on Thayer Street for biannual meetings but most of our correspondence was through email and google drive.

In Spring of 2022, after some stealth tracking down, I had the privilege of meeting Mad Peck, the creator of the iconic postcard that inspired this project. I met him at his home near Providence for a several hour discussion (that I did not record.) He was fascinating, recounting his entire history of his trajectory from Brown University’s computer science department to selling drug paraphernalia in mail order catalogs that he made, to music criticism and making his first book (Comix: A History of Comic Books in America) and designing rock band posters.

When trying to figure out what form this project would take, a postcard book made sense. It was an homage to the inspirational Mad Peck as well as a way to speak about place.

Providence : Uncovered is available for purchase here.