Broadway, #113 & 117

About this Property

#Redevelopment

These are two properties on the edge of the West Side along the highway corridor and Service Road 7 at the junction of Broadway. When they were built, 40 years before the highway, they were part of a denser neighborhood, with an apartment building to one side and wooden buildings on the entire block of Barclay and Federal. Since the 1951 Sanborn Map, 113 Broadway has been associated with automobile tires.

In 2020, a drawing surfaced denoting the possibility of 117 being converted into a commercial space. The drawing at Loopnet looks to be of a fictitious law firm occupying the building, with a blade sign off the front, blue awnings, and an elevated deck on top of the one story structure off the rear of the property. Perhaps the owner at the time was trying to make the property seem more desirable by suggesting some preliminary uses for it.

In early 2022, drawings were submitted to the City of Providence to convert 117 Broadway into five 2-bedroom apartments and, in the process, add an additional story to the front portion of the building and two more stories to the rear portion. As far as we can tell, the property does not sit inside a district that required design approval of these concepts.

In 2023, we place the 117 building into the #NotInRuins category while the 113 building is in #UrbanDecay.

Architecture

The concept is fine but the execution seems strange. The design is slightly incongruous, with windows that seem to almost touch the roof line. The siding and windows on the exposed western wall look cheap. No effort seems to have been made to match the new brick third floor with the existing brick — the new brick being redder than the brown brick used on the original first and second floor. There is even a slight setback of the third floor with absolutely no cornice or parapet of any kind along the façades roofline. The lack of these seemingly unimportant design details makes the whole thing look rather slapdash and hastily constructed.

All the while, nothing has happened or changed at 113 Broadway that would make us think it is no longer going to be a tire shop. The decaying nature of street side building plus the attraction to graffiti artists to its white concrete exterior walls would have to give would-be tenants of 117 Broadway pause.

#Current Events

No word as to when leasing will be available. We only hope that these are very affordable rents and the owner is not trying to create “luxury” in such a mixed commercial and residential location.

#History

No formal history of these buildings could be found so far.

113 Broadway has a commercial, concrete block structure off the back which serves primarily as the auto shop. A small extension on the east side is visible from Service Road 7 and has been painted with murals of some kind for 20 years or more. The main Broadway structure is a three story wooden home with commercial storefront. Three single door entrances are on the ground floor, with large plate glass windows in between and a series of square lites across the transoms. The façade is faced with tan brick on the second and third floors, with windows trimmed in red brick. The windows are in pairs, with a single window in the middle. The building is slightly asymmetrical, with the west side slightly shorter between the window pair and the central single window than on the east side. A deep wooden cornice with thick brackets dresses the roofline.

117 Broadway looks like a newer commercial structure given that is was likely upgraded in the 1950s with new brick facing and large, commercial storefront windows. The first floor was trimmed with the same tan brick and red brick trim as its neighbor. A small connection on the first floor makes these two buildings look like their interiors connect, but we are unsure that they actually do. The second floor was faced in brown red brick with plate glass commercial windows in groups of three. A third floor has now been added, faced also in red brick and with the same window pattern.

Both buildings have various structures off of their rear elevations that were likely later additions. In maps, both buildings in their core forms (without the outcroppings) as early as the 1920 Sanborn Map. Neither seems to be present in a 1908 map.

Maps

Links are to the curated image in our gallery or to original source material.

• 1908 L.J. Richards cadastral map, plate 4 (Private collection) — Neither building seems to be in place when compared with the later 1920 map
• 1920–1921 Sanborn Insurance Map, Volume 1, Plate 27 — Both buildings are in place, though without their later attached outbuildings. 121–117 is a 2-story concrete block building (blue) with a brick face (red line) while 115 is the 113 building today as a 3-story wooden building (yellow). A small concrete block addition is number 113 and attached to a neighboring building which was removed for the highway. Source: Library of Congress, Geography and Map Division, Sanborn Maps Collection (page 38).
• 1920–1951 Sanborn Insurance Map, Volume 1, Plate 27 — Both buildings are present and 113–115 has been altered. It is yellow inside still but now faced in brick or concrete with two connected buildings in concrete as well as the breezeway to the east. The 117 building looks unaltered and the rear addition has not yet been added. Source: Library of Congress, Geography and Map Division, Sanborn Maps Collection (page 38).
• (Not pictured) 1920–1956 Sanborn Insurance Map, Volume 1, Plate 27 — Much the same condition. The house to the rear of 117 is labeled “Machine Shop” now. Source: Library of Congress, Geography and Map Division, Sanborn Maps Collection (page 28).
• Google satellite view from 2023 — A modern datellite image of the same area showing the buildings in place. In fact, the roof has been removed from 117 and construction of its new third floor is underway, with new wooden supports visible on the rear one-story structure as it gets raised to a three story as well.