Broadway, #113

About this Property

#Last Tenant

The Sacco-Carlone family, who owned the property for decades and still operate a BTS location in Pawtucket, consolidated their business operations in 2022 and sold the Broadway property in 2023.¹

Since then, this building and its neighbor 117 Broadway are owned by Scott Aceto, a realtor who operates his business out of the first floor of 117. He had plans to revitalize 113 and was originally drawn to the charm of the structure. But the building’s deteriorating condition made redevelopment financially difficult.²

The Providence Preservation Society (PPS) ran a few great stories on this property that tell a first-hand history and show photos of the interior.

Architecture

City of Providence Preservation Planner Jason Martin said that the building’s brick veneer, added in the first half of the 20th century before the Broadway Historic District was created, was its “downfall.” “It’s not a good idea to put masonry over a stick-framed structure,” he said. “Once they did that, this building was pretty much doomed to come down.”³

Upon reviewing the insurance maps of these structures, that assessment checks out. The 113 building is present in a 1908 map as a wood frame dwelling, then slowly its walls become blue to denote stone or masonry. By the 1951 map, the wood frame dwelling has all four walls of masonry.

This is a problem because brick veneer is not structural, but it is very heavy. Improper attachment can create pressure on the wood framing, potentially causing damage over time. Cracks allow water to seep in and rot the wood which creates additional structural issues. All of that, and from what we read in the PPS stories, the storage of heavy tires in the upper floors over the years contributed to the deterioration of the structure.

It’s really too bad that this act doomed the structure, because the yellow and red patterned brickwork gives it much charm. The ground floor has a central single door entrance with two transom windows flanked by two commercial storefront window pairs with three transom lights over each window. On each far end is another single door entrance with two transoms. This first floor is capped with a slightly protruding wooden band detail. The two floors above are each set with a pair of windows, a central window, and another pair. Each window is trimmed in red brick while the face of the second and third floors are yellow brick. 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. There is a wooden cornice along the flat roof with thick brackets supporting it.

Excepting the façade, the building has much less charm. There is a cinder block addition to the east that is trapezoidal in shape to match the way Federal Street and the service road meet. To the rear, there are cinder block structures with garage doors for car service. Commercial signs for tire brands adorn many services, and where there is not a sign, there is graffiti.

The wall facing John J Partington Way (Service Road 1) had a BTS Tire mural for a long, long time, until about 2010 when graffiti overtook it. The wall was then painted white, and a new BTS mural mostly in blue reading “Welcome to Providence Rhode Island” in big letters replaced the previous. The Mural Crew at AS220 painted it. In 2022, it was painted over again. In late 2025 and 2026 a new fantastical mural in many colors with a floating figure and skulls and animals and flowers was painted.

#Current Events

The demolition of 113 Broadway was approved at the July 27, 2026 meeting of the Providence Historic District Commission (PHDC). The commission discourages demolition, but in this case, it cited the building’s “minimal architectural or historical merit.” Its deteriorating condition must have also tipped the decision. An earlier structural assessment noted “extensive” water damage and a load-bearing wall and portion of brick facade at risk of collapsing. We think this all means it is a classic case of demolition by neglect.

Activity at the site is expected to begun in 2027 and plans for the replacement building are preliminary and subject to the review and approval of the PHDC.

#History

Maps and additional details can be found on our entry for the adjacent 117 Broadway.

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From the “Broadway-Armory Historic District” National Register nomination form, 1974

113 Broadway — Residential and Commercial Building (19th C., 20th C.): 3-story; flat; buff brick (front) and clapboard (side) Italianate house modified as commercial building; with tapestry brick storefront and, above, bracketed cornice. Also, 1-story, flat, concrete block addition at east end.

#In the News

Inside the 19th-century Federal Hill tire shop heading for demolition

by Elisabeth Seidel
Providence Preservation Society | August 5, 2026 (abridged)

“TIRES,” proclaimed a 1936 advertisement for Broadway Tire Sales Company. “1000 used tires to pick from, $1 and up.”

Today, Tony Carlone laughs and shakes his head in disbelief. He knows the old shop well; his family spent decades running the business at 113 Broadway before closing the location in early 2023.

“I’d want them to count every one,” he said. “There’s no way you could put 1,000 tires — we could barely put 300.”

For more than a century, if something rolled through Federal Hill on tires, there was a good chance someone in the three-story wood-frame building — likely built before 1875 — could fix it. As Columbia Repair Shop, the storefront repaired bicycles and installed baby carriage tires before cars dominated Providence streets.

Later it became Broadway Tire Sales, then BTS Tire & Service, serving decades of drivers until the Carlone family consolidated the business into their Pawtucket location, where Carlone serves as the company president. The Broadway building was sold two years later, and now, after 115 years of commercial life, it’s heading for demolition. […]

The ground floor of 113 Broadway seems to be frozen in time, a time capsule of BTS Tire & Service’s last day in January of 2023. An office chair sits behind the front desk, Christmas cards and award plaques hang from the wood-paneled walls, and empty tire display racks wait in the lobby; everything is covered with a layer of dust.

The rest of the building appears to be in worse condition. The spiral staircase up to the third floor seems to cave in one direction, and the once-colorful linoleum floors are black with grime and littered with fallen paint chips. The walls are missing chunks of plaster, and there’s a visible gap where the building’s face is parting ways with its body.

Realtor Scott Aceto, who operates his real estate and property management companies out of the neighboring 117 Broadway, purchased the building from the Carlones in 2025. He said he was drawn to its character and quirky features, but the more he investigated the possibility of restoration, the more far-fetched it started to seem.

“I got a little gung ho,” said Aceto, looking over Broadway from the building’s second floor. “I was like, ‘I’m gonna put my offices downstairs. I’ll put a few apartments upstairs. This is such a cool spot. The rear will be a deck that overlooks the city.’”

“Then the more I looked, the more I’m like, ‘I don’t know that any of that will fly here,’” he continued.

Several experts confirmed Aceto’s fears and came to the same conclusion as the commission ultimately did; the building is simply too far gone.

While the ground floor has perpetually been in the transportation business, the second and third floors are maze-like and dense with rooms. Newspaper clippings from the late 1800s tell of a variety of tenants taking up residence in the address’ “tenements,” including a city councilman who hosted his daughter’s wedding at the site and a magnetic physician providing “clairvoyant examinations.”

Carlone said the two floors operated as a rooming house up until the late 1970s, when a surprise police raid turned up a drug-dealing tenant. He recalled telling his uncle, who had taken over the tire shop in 1939 and still owned the business at the time, that “you don’t need that $10 a day” and “we’re gonna not do this anymore.”

Carlone and his brother, Richard, officially took over the business in the ‘80s. The empty rooms were used as storage, each painted with a bright red number to help sort the wide variety of tires. But Carlone put the brakes on storage after an engineer visited and told him with a pale face, “This building is not meant for this.”

“The poor man,” Carlone said, “he couldn’t get down those stairs quick enough.”

Carlone recalled the location’s final days as “frustrating.” Attempts had been made throughout the decades to get the building in better shape, or at least spruce it up, but Carlone said there were seemingly endless financial and regulatory roadblocks.

“It just became impossible,” he said. “The estimates we could afford wouldn’t even touch what was needed.”

News of the imminent demolition didn’t surprise him; he said his family had considered the same idea, but “were always under the impression that taking it down was going to be impossible.” When the day came to leave the keys under the mat, Carlone said it was a “happy, happy time.”

Both Aceto and Carlone believe the property is quite valuable. Aceto plans to build a boutique hotel on the site, a venue he hopes will stand out from downtown lodging because you can see the view, rather than be “part of the view.” Carlone remembered sunsets and a view of the waterfront from the third floor.

“I hope this does come together,” he said. “That corner deserves something nice.”

— Seidel, Elisabeth. “Inside the 19th-century Federal Hill tire shop heading for demolition.” Accessed 01 November 2026 from https://ppsri.org/inside-the-19th-century-federal-hill-tire-shop-heading-for-demolition/