For those of you who knew of her, or knew her.

Aaron
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5.10.2001 00:05
Her determined efforts preserved Providence
• She crusaded to save historic structures and changed the nation's point of view in the process.
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BY MORGAN McVICAR
Journal Staff Writer
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PROVIDENCE -- Antoinette F. Downing, the founding chairwoman of the Rhode Island Historical
Preservation Commission and one of the leading authors, scholars and activists in preservation
since the 1930s, died yesterday at age 95.
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Mrs. Downing wrote books that are considered seminal works in preservation, lectured extensively
and sat at kitchen tables across the state helping residents figure out how to preserve their
neighborhoods.
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But her true legacy is as tangible as the bricks and clapboards of the many College Hill houses
that would have been razed were it not for her work.
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Mrs. Downing fought City Hall, the federal government and the conventional thinking
of her time. One by one, her opponents succumbed -- to her knowledge, her resolve
and her wile.
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"This really is the passing of an era," said Frederick C. Williamson, the state historic
preservation officer since 1969. "Because a good deal of what went on in preservation the last 30
years had Antoinette as the centerpiece.
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"Antoinette could be very, very tough when she wanted to be," Williamson said. "But she had a very
quiet determination. It wasn't explosive. A developer or anybody else who had a mind that was at
variance with Antoinette's, she was able to bend them to her will simply because of the force of
her own personality and her technical knowledge."
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Today, it seems impossible to imagine College Hill without its grand houses, representing the
architecture of three centuries, or Newport without its equally magnificent old homes and Gilded
Age mansions. But in the 1950s and 1960s, the ever-ominous "progress" and, in Providence's case,
an expansionist Brown University, were eager to swing the wrecking ball across both cities.
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At the time, much of College Hill was dilapidated. People on streets such as Benefit
were in search of drugs and worse; there were no candlelit tours of houses featuring
wide floorboards, wainscotting and elaborate dentil molding.
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The federal and local governments, trumpeting urban renewal, sent bulldozers across cities such as
Hartford and New Haven. Political leaders in Providence wanted to do likewise. And Brown was eager
to join in the demolition to make way for dorms, classroom buildings and parking lots.
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The Ivy League university was in desperate need of more space, having grown from
2,224 students in 1945 to 3,579 a decade later. During that period, Brown razed or
moved dozens of buildings and was feeling its oats.
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But by 1957, a core group of College Hill residents, Mrs. Downing principal among them, decided
they had had enough.
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A meeting that year to protest Brown's muscle-flexing drew more than 100 neighbors. But even Mrs.
Downing couldn't foresee what she and her fellow activists would engender.
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"We did not know that we were going to set up a mechanism that would result in a federal program
and a change in the national point of view," Mrs. Downing said a few years ago. "We were simply
trying to stop an institution from absorbing the old part of the city."
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But with Brown on one flank, another enemy of the would-be preservationists mobilized on the
other. The city proposed an urban-renewal plan to demolish much of College Hill, most notably much
of Benefit Street.
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So the nascent Providence Preservation Society, cofounded by Mrs. Downing in 1956, had no time for
growing pains. Within a year, it was taking on Brown and the city. The city caved first,
abandoning the catastropic concept called urban renewal.
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Brown proved a more determined foe, and the university and preservation society would lock horns
on many occasions in the decades ahead.
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That her husband worked for Brown and many of their friends were associated with the college
placed Mrs. Downing in an awkward, if not downright unpleasant, position.
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"She would tell me about going to faculty parties with her husband and essentially being made very
uncomfortable," said Wendy Nicholas, the longtime head of the preservation society who is now the
director of the northeast office of the National Trust for Historic Preservation.
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"Because her views were so different from the common thinking of the day. But, God bless her, she
just had a passion and vision and determination that really made a difference for Providence."
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The preservation of College Hill would become Mrs. Downing's crowning achievement. By the 1970s,
preservation, not demolition, had become the rallying cry of urbanists and the federal government
alike. Mrs. Downing's work in Providence became a national model of sorts, and Mrs. Downing a
icon.
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Congress passed laws requiring the preservation of historically significant properties, and began
a program of tax breaks to persuade developers to preserve rather than raze.
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In 1968, then-Gov. John H. Chafee established the Rhode Island Historic Preservation Commission
and named Mrs. Downing its chairwoman, a title she retained until 1995. The commission identifies
and protects historic properties.
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Mrs. Downing grew up in New Mexico. She graduated from the University of Chicago with a degree in
architectural history. In 1931, she and her now late husband, George E. Downing, moved to Rhode
Island when he was hired to teach art history at Brown.
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Mrs. Downing provided a hint of what was to come when, in 1937, she published the book Early Homes
of Rhode Island, which is still considered the seminal book on 17th-, 18th- and 19th-century
buildings in the state.
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For the next decade, Downing concentrated on raising her two children, a son, Jay, who lives in
Providence, and a daughter, Jan, of Wheaton, Md.
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Jay Downing recalls his mother during that period as "just my mother," a woman who loved to cook,
experimenting with "all kinds of stuff," and who taught art for a few years at the Gordon School
to help pay her children's tuition there. The tiger in Mrs. Downing came out later when she
entered the preservation fray.
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"She just loved old houses, and she was stubborn," her son said. "She got a bit in her teeth and
she ran with it. Persistent is putting it lightly. Mom didn't like waste. And to tear down an old
house to put up something new was a waste of something good."
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In the late 1940s, Mrs. Downing and her husband claimed one of the houses that Brown had planned
to tear down to make way for a dormitory. They moved the house to Power Street and lived in it for
many years.
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In 1952, Mrs. Downing helped the Preservation Society of Newport County document the historic
architecture in Newport, authoring with Vincent J. Scully Jr. the study The Architectural History
of Newport.
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Mrs. Downing also chaired the Providence Historic District Commission from its inception in 1962.
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Ray Rickman, a former legislator who was on the commission for five years, tells a story of an
encounter Mrs. Downing had as commissioner in the late 1980s.
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"A person came in who had paid $300,000 on a house for College Hill. He wanted to put a huge
addition on the house, bigger than the house. He started telling us, 'It's a free country.'
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"He said, 'I'm a taxpayer and I paid $300,000 for this house. Why are you telling me what to do?'
Antoinette said, 'That house was here 200 years before you got it, and it is our job to see that
it is here 200 years after you. You are the steward and I congratulate you on the fact that you
have the money to be the steward for a short period of time.
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"And we're here to help you with your stewardship."
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The homeowner returned to the commission later, having added a smaller wing, and told Mrs.
Downing, "Thank you. You were right. I did the right thing with my house."
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In 1987, Mrs. Downing received the National Trust's Louise du Pont Crowninshield Award, the
historic preservation community's most prestigious award.
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In October, several thousand preservationists will arrive in Providence for the National Trust's
annual conference.
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"Finally, her town is hosting the big preservation conference and her life's work will be
showcased to the national preservation audience," said Nicholas, of the National Trust. "She had a
long life and she made a huge difference.
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"And you can't ask more of your life than to have made a difference."
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Mayor Vincent A. Cianci Jr. has ordered that city flags fly at half-staff in Mrs. Downing's honor.
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A memorial service will be held at noon Monday at First Unitarian Church on Benevolent Street,
Providence. The family requests that in lieu of flowers donations be made to the Providence
Preservation Society.
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www.aaronmarcavitch.com

Graduate Student Caucus Chair
American Association of History and Computing

M.A. (Public) History
Middle Tennessee State University

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