The Founding of Lippitt Hill and Urban Renewal StoryMap
Olney Street Baptist Church
In the late 50s, the nationwide wave of urban renewal hit Providence. Governments identified "blighted" neighborhoods and targeted them for redevelopment. In theory, the idea was to remove substandard housing and concentrated slums, "revitalizing" inner cities. Such projects were intended to draw the white middle class back into cities, by eliminating Black neighborhoods and creating new housing developments and shopping centers where suburban whites would feel comfortable shopping and working. In effect, the projects displaced existing low-income and Black residents in large numbers, disrupting families, businesses, and communities. For this reason, James Baldwin famously described urban renewal as “Negro removal.”
Urban Renewal and Memories of Providence's East Side is a tour of 1950s Lippitt Hill, the neighborhood that was razed and redeveloped in the urban renewal era, displacing those who called it home. This work was done in conjunction with a continuation of research to study the wealth appropriation/extraction started in 2020. The storymap chronicles the people and places displaced during the Lippitt Hill Urban Renewal.
You will see such places as the Olney Street Baptist Church that was destroyed, not considered worthy of restoration, which tells the following story.
Olney Street Baptist Church was founded at 30 Olney St in 1901, where it served as a place of worship and community gathering for many East Siders. The old building and location were seized and demolished for the redevelopment project. For a few years, services were held at the Church of the Savoir and Benefit Street Recreation Center, before the church rebuilt at its current location, 100 Olney Street. Jesse Bradley recounts, "We’re 116 years old in December. I’m still in the church. Been in the church. I was the little boy with the suit and tie on that had to be in church. ...My mother was one of the people who fought for that church to be located at where it’s at now on Olney St. Brown University wanted the property. Olney Street had to fight for it to keep it. And we’re still fighting to keep it."