Assignment #1 
Architecture and Memory 
Gillian Lang 
2.16.2009 

	To most, this particular Providence landmark would seem relatively non descript. However, for my family the aging structure housed a very important moment. The place that I refer to is now called the Brown Hillel building, or the Glenn and Darcy Weiner Hillel Center. This structure, built in 1878, and originally known as Froebel Hall, was designed by the notable architectural team of Stone and Carpenter. This beautiful old chalet-style building was were my grandparents met. 	
	The building has gone through several evolutions of purpose. It was built in 1878 to house a school for kindergarten teachers. This was only the second such institution in the country. It operated under the tenets of the Froebel method of pedagogy. This method became popular in the United States in 1876, when it was presented at the Centennial Exhibition, in Philadelphia. However, by the early part of the century, the most notable aspect of the building was the vast hard wood dance floor that took up almost the entirety of the second floor. 
	Through the cartographic work of G. M. Hopkins Co., and their, “Atlas of the City of Providence” we can see the layout of the neighborhood, as it was in 1918. In this plat map we can see Froebel Hall sitting, in a fairly grand residential neighborhood, only a block from the University, and surrounded by large Victorian structures. However, if we pan out slightly, we see its proximity to Thayer Street a small business district, housing a theater (The Toy Theater, now known as The Avon), a garage and several businesses, as well as a Livery on Meeting Street. At that time, Meeting Street, a mere block away was still a lower class neighborhood. The author Jane Lancaster speaks about the area in 1912, in her biography of Lillian Gilbreth, the noted motion study expert and mother of twelve, for whom the book Cheaper by the Dozen was written. In Lancaster’s book, entitled Making Time, she describes the Gilbreth’s early days as a family in Providence. 
“Brown Street was part of a varied, racially mixed neighborhood. A block to the west stood the mansions of Prospect Street, where mill owners and  business men lived in style, while a block to the north on Olive Street was the Providence Shelter for Colored Orphans, which housed as many as two dozen black children at any one time. Meeting Street, a block further north, was home to many of Providence’s black families. While white middle-class children took dancing classes in Froebel Hall, catty-corner form the Gilbreths’ house, their mothers sat in Laura Carr’s Tearoom- which was also a source of excellent ice cream-just across the street. The Brown Street trolley, horse drawn in those days, passed by the door…”(p 129).
 
	In this scene, Lancaster paints a simple, yet vivid picture of Brown Street life, that shows us that Froebel Hall’s location would have been a very interesting point of confluence for three different communities, the upper class, the lower class and the academic.
	Even though twenty years separate this urban landscape from that which my grandparents would have experienced, it can still help us to set the scene, due to the fact that the area around Froebel Hall remained structurally similar until much later in the twentieth century. It was not until 1962 that Brown started work on J. Walter Wilson, the Biomed laboratories were not created until 1969, and the orphanage housed children up until 1940. So, perhaps we can glean from this information a little of what the area around the building was like at the time that my grandparents met. 
		
	Like the outside of the building, it takes some imagination to mentally recreate the inside of Froebel Hall. An extensive renovation in 2001, redesigned the building to better fit the needs of the Brown Hillel program. So, the original dance floor has been broken up into smaller meeting rooms. However, this being said, sitting in the room, you can still get an idea of what it once was. You can see traces of the building’s former life. By looking at the age and design of the baseboards, one is able to figure out which walls were original to the structure and which were added in. By looking at the design and quality of the windows, one can figure out which ones my grandparents looked through, and which ones are replacements. By adding up these architectural clues, it is possible to envision the scene inside the hall. However, to mentally recreate the event that transpired, to learn the details of the story itself, I had to turn to my dad and his brothers for information. Neither of my grandparents are still alive. So, I was reliant on the strength of the passed down narrative. 	
	According to my uncles, it was after meals, when the family gathered in the kitchen to wash dishes, that these stories were retold. My grandparents would wash, and the kids would dry. With each dish, they would hear the stories of the past. They would hear about when my grand parents first met.
	My grandparents had known of each other before arriving at the hall. It was an American Bankers Association dance, and as they were working at the time for Hospital Trust and Industrial Trust, two local banks, they were both in attendance. 
	My grandmother was the notably accomplished daughter of a Pawtucket mill owner. Having graduated from Pembroke at the age of nineteen in 1932, she had continued study at Catherine Gibbs, and was then a secretary to the President of Hospital Trust Bank. Her plans were to continue on in the field of International Banking, which her boss said she could do well in as long as she didn’t get married. 
	My grandfather most likely recognized my grandmother, as the daughter of his former boss. Upon arriving in America from Scotland at the age of twelve, my grandfather began work as an office boy in my  great grandfather’s mill. His last time in a class room was in eighth grade back in Glasgow. From then on he was working, pulling himself up by the bootstraps in true American fashion
	In 1934, on the dance floor of Froebel Hall, the two met, my grandfather asked my grandmother to dance, on the same floor that children had learned the waltz, and young people had learned to teach. By all accounts, it was one dance. A band played, chatter and laughter fluctuated through the room. My grandparents gracefully drifted  through the space, a pair of sensible heels and some ruffed up leather dancing shoes shuffling across the floor. A single fleeting moment captured in memory and space. No dates were made to follow. They left with their separate dates, to reemerge onto a darkened Brown Street. However, in their future meetings, and while washing dishes, years later, they would recall that dance around the aging floors of Froebel Hall. 
Bibliography:
http://www.artinruins.com/arch/redevelop/hillel/#

http://www.brown.edu/Administration/News_Bureau/Databases/Encyclopedia/search.php?serial=J0060

http://www.brownhillel.org/building

http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~rigenweb/maps/1918prov/1918Providence19-2b.jpg

http://www.searleandsearle.com/portfolio.htm?c=4&p=19

Interviews with Fraser, Keith, Neil, and Duncan Lang, as well as information gathered from Gayle Lynch of the Brown Archive.

Lancaster, Jane, Making Time; Lillian Moller Gilbreth- A Life Beyond “Cheaper by the Dozen”. Northeastern University Press, Boston; 2004. 

Woodward, Wm McKenzie, Sanderson, Edward F., Providence; A Citywide Survey of Historic Resources. The Rhode island Historical Preservation Commission, Providence; 1986.

To view an image of the building as it stands now, follow this link:
http://www.artinruins.com/arch/redevelop/hillel/#