Chase Brass & Copper

About this Property

#Reason for Demolition

There are many reasons we — like most Rhode Islanders — think of Benny’s with fondness. We remember how they were part of the culture of Rhode Island — many news reports around a big winter snow storm would feature a video clip of customers snapping up shovels and rock salt from Benny’s. They were a local landmark. They were a local place to grab a wide variety of simple items for pretty cheap. A “hardware” store that also sold garden supplied, toys, bikes, cleaning supplies, auto supplies, and candy bars.

In the late 2010s, Benny’s hit harder and harder times. Competition from nearby Home Depot and Lowe’s stores, plus the proliferation of CVS and Walgreens stories which sold many of the non-hardware items made it difficult for Benny’s to draw foot traffic. Their low price points made it difficult for them to make money — it was always about volume, but when you can’t get volume, you canÆt make money. They were seven years shy of their 100th birthday.

The last remaining store, on Putnam Pike in the Greenville section of Smithfield, closed its doors at 5 pm, Monday, December 11, 2017.¹

Want to wear your love for Benny’s? Have you visited VintageBennys.com?

#Current Events

Procaccianti redeveloped and owns this strip mall parcel in which (in 2022) Chipotle, Hunt’s Photo/Video, jersey Mike’s Subs, and a Lifespan Urgent Care office is located. The nearby Allens Printworks is still under redevelopment into medical office spaces.

#History

In 1920, smaller wood frame buildings are set on small lots. To the north, a Truck Tire Service Station exists. To the west is the Allen Printworks. In 1939, pretty much the same thing. On the corner of Dryden Lane appears the “White Motor Company” which later becomes the State Board of Elections building until 2019.

By 1951, the Chase Brass and Copper building is in place. According to the Sanborn Maps, a portion of it is two-stories while the bulk of it is a single story warehouse. It is colored in blue, which means it is a cement block building, and a notation says it is brick-faced. The two-story portion is in the southeastern section of the building. In the more recent photos, we can see that this portion had some Art Deco detailing with an entrance set-off in concrete. Windows were rectangular and fenestration was sparse.

In the 1972 aerial photo nothing much has changed. A photo from 1981 is the same. Between 1981 and 1985 the Truck Tire Service Station has been demolished — its easier to see in the 1988 photo. The Benny’s store as we knew it starts to take shape as one story out-buildings are joined together to create one large building.

We have not found too much about the Chase Brass and Copper company in Providence, but if they indeed the same, Chase Brass and Copper from Waterbury, Connecticut, was founded in 1876. Chase entered the consumer market with a line of chrome Art Deco household items in the 1930s, created by leading designers of the day such as Russel Wright, Rockwell Kent and Walter VonNessen.² That would explain the Art Deco building they erected for themselves in likely the 1940s.

Sources

• 1920-1921 Sanborn Map, Volume 2, Plate 77
• 1939 G.M. Hopkins Map, Plate 24
• 1920-1951 Sanborn Map, Volume 2, Plate 77
• 1920-1956 Sanborn Map, Volume 2, Plate 77

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Benny’s History

• Benny’s Origin Story — RI Monthly
• Benny’s In East Greenwich, 1936-2017 — East Greenwich News
• Benny’s — Wikipedia

#In the News

There was plenty of news about Benny’s closing, but this story caught our eye as one of the reasons why we loved the store and the attitude of the owners.

Benny’s “Biggest Little” ad much cooler

by Providence Journal Staff
Providence Journal | May 29, 2016 (abridged)

It will end up costing a fraction of the state’s $5-million marketing campaign, which has been a galling fiasco so far, and it won’t cost a dime of taxpayer money.

But a new Benny’s ad, which starts running on local TV and cable stations on Tuesday, does a far better job of capturing why Rhode Islanders love this state — and why we stay here despite the galling fiascoes.

For one thing, the Benny’s bit is authentically Rhode Island.

Governor Raimondo’s administration paid Milton “I Love New York” Glaser $400,000 to come up with a generic logo and a head-scratching slogan: “Rhode Island: Cooler & Warmer.” And a new tourism video inexplicably included footage from Iceland.

By contrast, the Benny’s ad shows an array of familiar Rhode Island places and faces while reviving a quintessentially Rhode Island anthem — the “Biggest Little State in the Union.”

The lyrics will strike a chord with anyone who grew up here in the 1980s (like me). The catchy tune was part of an odd marketing campaign — aimed not at luring out-of-state tourists but at making Rhode Islanders feel better about their little state. And in its own odd way, it worked — and still does.

ABC News did a segment about it in 1982. With his gravelly voice and folksy style, reporter Hughes Rudd began by highlighting Glaser’s “I Love New York” campaign.

“Self-boosting TV commercials for this state or that one are suddenly becoming common in these financially tough times,” Rudd said. “Rhode Island has a lot to offer any tourist. But many people who live here seem to have such an inferiority complex about Rhode Island that they think other people make jokes about them.”

Cue the “Biggest Little State in the Union.”

“To try and make Rhode Islanders feel better about themselves, the state has made a TV commercial about itself, complete with a more positive song, which is shown only on stations within the state,” Rudd said. “The slogan for this campaign is so contradictory, it’s incomprehensible. But since when do commercials have to make sense?”

Actually, the ironic juxtaposition makes perfect sense to Rhode Islanders. And reviving it made perfect sense to Rhode Islander Arnold Bromberg, co-owner of Benny’s.

Bromberg said that back in March, Benny’s began looking to do “something different” with its spring and summer ads, so he and RDW Group partner Dante Bellini Jr. had a “mull session.”

At that time, state officials were taking heat for the “Cooler & Warmer” slogan. “I didn’t like it,” Bromberg said of the slogan. “It didn’t resonate.”

But then they began talking about how much they had liked the “Biggest Little State in the Union.” Bromberg dug out a 45-rpm vinyl version of the tune, which was written by PR executive Bill Comeau and sung by Rob Carlson. And Bellini proposed having a band reprise the song on the roof of the Benny’s on Branch Avenue in Providence.

In the end, “the rules of common sense” applied, and no one climbed on the roof, Bromberg said. But Benny’s enlisted a quintessentially Rhode Island band — Steve Smith and the Nakeds — to record the song, and a full Rhode Island cast completed the project. “We didn’t need any education beyond Classical, La Salle and RIC to get this together,” Bromberg said.

Last week, Bellini, Bromberg and Smith met at Bogh AV Productions in Warwick for final editing and mixing.

Bromberg said there’s obvious self-interest in the ad, which touts Benny’s as “the biggest little store” in the “biggest little state.” But also, he said, “We love Rhode Island, we are all natives,” and “we hope that it makes people feel better about Rhode Island.” While it’s not up to him, he said the state might be able to use the message and the song to attract tourists and businesses.

The ad features a diverse array of Rhode Islanders — including Sal Monteiro Jr. of the Institute for the Study & Practice of Nonviolence; Kobi Dennis of Project Night Vision; Sophia Academy students; comedian Frank O’Donnell and Big Blue Bug pest expert Tony DeJesus. […]

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“COMMENTARY Benny’s ‘Biggest Little’ ad much cooler.” Providence Journal (RI), sec. RI News, 29 May 2016, p. 2. NewsBank: America’s News, infoweb.newsbank.com/apps/news/document-view?p=NewsBank&docref=news/15D2C768960081E0. Accessed 1 Feb. 2022.