What Cheer Mutual Fire Insurance
also known as former United Way headquarters
A classic mid-century brick and limestone commercial building transformed into a highly visible commercial, residential, and rooftop restaurant space
images of this Property
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Providence Journal, November 28, 1954 press clipping from the John Hutchins Cady Research Scrapbooks Collection, Providence Public Library -
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7 images: Press to view larger or scroll sideways to see more. Contribution from the John Hutchins Cady Research Scrapbooks Collection, Providence Public Library
About this Property
Redevelopment
The inclusion of this building onto PPS’s Ten Most Endangered Properties List in 2009 was a shock. The building was constructed in 1948, and the whole point of including it in the list was to draw attention to the lack of mid-century construction that Providence has. You don’t know what you had until it’s gone, after all.
The original developers mentioned in the news story below must have dropped out. Their plan was to simply demolish the building and utilize the corner lot for a pharmacy with a drive through — think the typical suburban Walgreens. Even without demolishing a perfectly nice mid-century office building, a typical suburban drive-through on this corner would have been a disaster and a determent to the neighborhood. Despite Councilman Yurdin’s failure to get the building listed on the City’s Industrial Commercial Buildings District (ICBD)m the developers must have dropped out due to the bad press alone.
For two years., Brown University leased the building while a new buyer was sought. They had the right to purchase the building after two years, but unsurprisingly, they did not exercise that right. Its location simply did not fit into their master plan.
Premier Development became the new owner circa 2015 and hired ZDS Architecture & Interiors to design nineteen apartments on the upper floors. A new rooftop level was added along with seven commercial units for 30,000 sf of commercial space at a total cost of $20 million.
Mare Rooftop restaurant was added by 2018 and is the state’ß only year-round rooftop restaurant, complete with heated igloos for the winter.1
The building’s conversion from office to mixed-use won a 2018 Design Award from the local AIA chapter. Their winning description reads:
This exciting mixed use development and adaptive reuse looks poised to stimulate the revitalizing of its neighborhood by providing an asset instead of a large vacant facility. This project took a mundane and frankly “pedestrian unfriendly” old Factory Mutual building — and while maintaining its basic form, historic features, and materials — the design extends and expands both up to a diverse set of intriguing rooftop spaces and out to a raised terrace toward Waterman Street — providing a complex ecology of programmatic uses and retail space that complement the flanking street, the corner, the pedestrian, the rooftop residential units, and the dynamic glazed and open rooftop restaurant with great vistas and outdoor spaces.2
Current Events
Inquiries for residential or commercial space should visit Premier Rentals’ website.
History
Maps
- 1920–1956 Sanborn Map, Volume 2, Plate 33 (page 34) — The building is shown (though not on the 1951 map) and is labelled “Blackstone Mutual Insurance Co.”
From the short-lived Ten Most Endangered Properties Wiki, abridged
[…] The facility was donated to the United Way in the late 1970s by insurer FM Global. In October 2007, United Way sold the building to RI Acquisitions, a partnership of developers Andrew Rockett and Charles Irving. […]
Today, the building’s uncertain future has caused a stir in the community. As a prominent part of the Wayland Street area, loss of the United Way Building would dramatically disrupt the surrounding neighborhood. The corner location makes it an integral part of the current mixed-use development pattern. City Councilman Seth Yurdin actively campaigned for the building’s placement in the Industrial Commercial Buildings District (ICBD), which would require review by the Historic District Commission before the structure could be demolished. The building, however, was ultimately not placed in the ICBD and remains vulnerable. Plans to demolish the structure to make way for a suburban-style pharmacy with a drive-through lane had been proposed by developers. […]
Historically, preservation of more recent architectural styles is less valued by the public. At the beginning of the preservation movement in Providence in the 1950s, Victorian-era houses along Benefit Street were razed in order to accommodate the relocation of houses from the early-nineteenth century and colonial era. There was little appreciation for Victorian architecture which was seen as garish; today, well-preserved Victorian neighborhoods in communities across the country are protected as carefully as are buildings from earlier eras.
As the public’s appreciation for mid-century modern architecture matures, efforts must be taken to assure its survival, particularly in Providence. Providence was largely built out by 1940 and thus has comparatively few buildings from the post-war era. The What Cheer Mutual Fire Insurance Building, in addition to being a well-executed, good example of modern architecture is a rare instance of a form that must be preserved for future generations, particularly until a survey of these resources can be done and their significance is better understood.
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A synopsis of this write up along with an update can be found at PPS’s Guide to Providence Architecture.
From the RIHPHC’s Historic and Architectural Resources of the East Side, Providence, 1989
Samuel Lerner, architect: An asymmetrical composition of 2- and 3-story, flat-roofed rectilinear units of brick and limestone, with simply trimmed windows. The focal point is a tower with a glass-walled entrance under a cantilevered canopy, a tall vertical window band broken by a spandrel panel containing the company logo, and a clock. This is a good example of the conservative modernism used for Providence commercial buildings in the 1950s, and reflects a new and more intensive type of development coming into Wayland Square in that period.
In the News
Drive under way in Wayland Sq. to preserve ’50s office building
by Daniel Barbarisi
Providence Journal | May 14, 2008
The city’s preservationists are well known for their defense of the 18th- and 19th-century architecture lining Benefit Street, and the historic mills that dot the city.
The death of a hulking brick office building from the 1950s, meanwhile, would not normally inspire impassioned resistance.
But in Wayland Square, the looming demolition of the United Way headquarters building has aroused preservationists and the area’s councilman to preserve the 42,000 square-foot office building, while making arguments that the 1950s are becoming historic after all.
“As mid-20th century modern buildings, like 229 Waterman Street, continue to age, they are becoming more valued and appreciated. In Providence, we have comparatively few from this era and they deserve the same protections as 19th-century mill buildings,” wrote Victoria Veh, executive director of the Providence Preservation Society, in a letter supporting preservation of the building.
United Way sold the building in October for $4.3 million to RI Acquisitions, a partnership of developers Andrew Rockett and Charles Irving. United Way is moving to a new headquarters in Olneyville. The new owners plan to knock down the building and build a stand-alone structure there, most likely a pharmacy.
City Councilman Seth Yurdin has filed a bill placing the building in the city’s Industrial Commercial Buildings District, which would grant it numerous protections and force the developer to gain approval from the city’s Historic District Commission before demolishing it. The building’s placement on the list was approved by the council’s Ordinance Committee Monday night and will be heard by the full council at a special meeting tomorrow.
“I was concerned that the building serves as an anchor for Wayland Square,” Yurdin said, explaining why he wants it protected.
The building, erected in 1948-1949 as the What Cheer Mutual Fire Insurance Co. Building, is a brick and limestone, flat-roof office building that the preservation society described as a “good example of the conservative corporate modernism of 1950s Providence commercial architecture.”
Robert I. Stolzman, a lawyer representing the developer, said that RI Acquisitions has already invested money in the project and purchased it with the understanding that the building could be torn down.
And the additional review that placing the building in the ICBD would require is unnecessary, Stolzman said. The City Plan Commission already requires an extensive review process, he said.
At the same time, he said the developer recognizes the impact that corner has on the neighborhood.
“We understand the importance of the corner and we’ll do a nice project,” he said.
But he said the building does not deserve this level of protection — it is not, as the statute states, a critically important building to the historic fabric of the city, Stolzman said.
“It’s not a bad building, but this is not one of the critically historic buildings that one would consider a landmark,” he said.
Even advocates for the building’s preservation acknowledged that protecting this building may seem strange at first glance.
“This large two-story brick and limestone office structure does not immediately evoke the image of an historically or architecturally significant building,” said Daisy Schenepel, president of the Fox Point Neighborhood Association, in a letter to the city. She noted, however, that preservationists nationwide are beginning to recognize the significance of 1950s commercial architecture.
Joseph Lemus, who lives several blocks away on Rhode Island Avenue, said the building has been an important part of the neighborhood for decades now.
“It may not be an architectural gem, but I think it has merit,” he said, adding that what goes there afterward is just as relevant.
“We’re interested in protecting the quality of life for people in the neighborhood. We’ve heard that some of the development proposals for that site include a drugstore. Within 100 yards of that site there are two drugstores.”
What is built after the United Way building is gone may be at the crux of the issue for some.
Robert Azar, director of current planning for the city, said that Providence’s interest is in making sure that this important part of Wayland Square is home to a structure consistent with the mixed-use, office and street-retail area around it; that could be accomplished with the currents building or with a new building that holds the corner equally well.
”There should be created something that is at least as good, if not better, than what’s already there,” Azar said.
”Another building, sensitively designed, well-placed at this property could also do that,” Azar said.
Stolzman said that the developer will meet with city planners and Yurdin and discuss their options before the council formally takes up the matter.
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Barbarisi, Daniel. “Drive under way in Wayland Sq. to preserve ‘50s office building.” Providence Journal (RI), Metro ed., sec. News, 14 May 2008, pp. D-01. NewsBank: America’s News, infoweb.newsbank.com/apps/news/document-view?p=NewsBank&docref=news/152425BB97BFA6A0. Accessed 28 Dec. 2022.
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Ciampa, Gail. “Year in Review: 2018 was another delicious year in R.I., from brunch to cocktails.” Providence Journal: Web Edition Articles (RI), sec. Entertainment life, 25 Dec. 2018. NewsBank: America’s News, infoweb.newsbank.com/apps/news/document-view?p=NewsBank&docref=news/170943E04C9AF978. Accessed 28 Dec. 2022. ↩
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Honor Award, 2018 AIAri Design Awards. AIA RI chapter website, 2018. Captured 28 December 2022 from https://web.archive.org/web/20200106132744/http://aia-ri.org/design-awards-portfolio/2018-design-awards/160/229-waterman ↩