Westminster Street, in downtown Providence, looking east toward College Hill.
Victoria, Billy and I adventured to Westminster Street to see a friend, Elaine Ostrach Chaika, speak about her book, Humans, Dogs and Civilization, at a bookstore, Symposium Books. Afterwards, we walked up Westminster to Empire, where we dipped into the Foo Fest, an annual block party held by the arts cooperative AS220, I had my camera, and here are some results:
Heading back to the car after a pleasant afternoon on beautiful Westminster Street in downtown Providence.
About David Brussat
This blog was begun in 2009 as a feature of the Providence Journal, where I was on the editorial board and wrote a weekly column of architecture criticism for three decades. Architecture Here and There fights the style wars for classical architecture and against modern architecture, no holds barred.
History Press asked me to write and in August 2017 published my first book, "Lost Providence." I am now writing my second book.
My freelance writing on architecture and other topics addresses issues of design and culture locally and globally.
I am a member of the board of the New England chapter of the Institute of Classical Architecture & Art, which bestowed an Arthur Ross Award on me in 2002.
I work from Providence, R.I., where I live with my wife Victoria, my son Billy and our cat Gato.
If you would like to employ my writing and editing to improve your work, please email me at my consultancy, dbrussat@gmail.com, or call 401.351.0457.
Testimonial: "Your work is so wonderful - you now enter my mind and write what I
would have written."
- Nikos Salingaros, mathematician at the University of Texas, architectural theorist and author of many books.
Architecture Here and There 
I can remember the halcyon of downtown. It was an exciting place to be.. Thanks to the “Midland Mall” and later the Warwick Mall, downtown Providence suffered a slow death. They also killed downtown Pawtucket.
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I live in Indiana now, but was born in RI.I Although I have been back, haven’t been into the city. What a treat to see it now. The 7th one down reminds me of Paris. Thanks for this special treat.
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I’m glad you enjoyed them. Westminster (and other streets of Providence) are very beautiful. Westminster itself 30 years ago was a pedestrian mall, but it was ugly, with lots of the buildings covered with faux modernist facades. It was redone in 1989, laying down brick sidewalks, stone intersections, period lampposts and beginning the long process, now I think entirely complete, of restoring the old building facades, which had mostly been built between the 1870s and 1930s. Have you seen the new river walks and bridges up and down the Providence and Woonasquatucket rivers?
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