Butcher Block Mill – R.K. Projects

Butcher Block Mill
Eamon Brown, Lauren Davis Fisher, Brad Fesmire, Lyn Goeringer, Lynne Harlow, Buck Hastings, Megan and Murray McMillan, Mike Stoltz, Matthew Underwood, Humanbeast
March 2011
25 Eagle Street, Providence

Butcher Block Mill

Exhibition and opening ceremony.

20,000 sq ft (four buildings, mid-renovation).

Development site.
Access through Partnership for Creative Industrial Space.
Ribbon-cutting and public preview of the renovation.
Site-specific installations, multimedia exhibition.

Former Joseph Banigan Rubber Co., 1896.
United States Rubber Co., 1910–1975.
Eastern Butcher Block furniture works, most recently.
Buildings 11, 14, 15, 18.
Salvaged material from the Fort Thunder neighboring site.

Preservationists, city officials, and artists preview the renovation of the former Eastern Butcher Block in Providence through a 20,000 sq. ft. multimedia exhibition organized with Tabitha Piseno, Sam Keller, Neal Walsh, Rhode Island Citizens for the Arts, and the Providence Preservation Society.

A project of Butcher Block Mill, LLC and managed by Partnership for Creative Industrial Space, the historic preservation of the Joseph Banigan Rubber Co. (1896 to 1910) along the Woonasquatucket River signals a reuse of the industrial property into affordable space.

Installations: Eamon Brown, Lauren Davis Fisher, Brad Fesmire, Lyn Goeringer, Lynne Harlow, Buck Hastings, Megan and Murray McMillan, Mike Stoltz, Matthew Underwood.

Organized by Tabitha Piseno and Sam Keller with Neal Walsh (AS220), Erik Bright (Partnership for Creative Industrial Space), Rachel Rafaelian (Butcher Block, LLC / Alex and Ani), Rhode Island Citizens for the Arts, and the Providence Preservation Society.

Opening with Angel Taveras, Mayor of Providence (2011–2015), and Allan Fung, Mayor of Cranston (2009–2021).

Site

The buildings stand at the western end of a 23-acre complex north of the Woonasquatucket River, where the Joseph Banigan Rubber Company began making rubber goods in 1896. Building 14 survives from that first ownership; Buildings 11, 15, and 18 followed the plant’s 1910 acquisition by Revere Rubber, a division of United States Rubber. The company expanded eastward for six decades, absorbing the former Rhode Island Locomotive Works along the way, until Uniroyal moved production out of state in 1975. The four buildings were last occupied by Eastern Butcher Block, a furniture manufacturer, and are among 37 structures inventoried in the complex’s National Register nomination.

Site history adapted from the National Register of Historic Places nomination for the United States Rubber Company Mill Complex (Edward Connors, 2005; NRHP 05000917) and historic tax-credit documentation prepared by the Providence Revolving Fund.