The Building Before the Superman Building
If you've spent any time downtown, you know the Superman Building — 26 stories of Art Deco staring down Kennedy Plaza like it's still 1928. Tallest building in Rhode Island. Empty since 2013. On every endangered-places list there is.
Here's the part most people don't know: there was another building on that lot first. Bigger than anything else in town when it went up. One of the most photographed buildings in Providence in its day.
Then it burned.
This is the Butler Exchange.
What It Was
The Butler Exchange went up between 1871 and 1873, built by the heirs of Cyrus Butler — the same Cyrus Butler who put up the Providence Arcade back in 1828 (the one folks called "Butler's Folly" until it eventually proved itself). His heirs went bigger. A lot bigger.
When the Exchange opened in 1873, it was the largest building in Providence. Six stories. Second Empire style. Iron storefronts on the first floor, three stories of brick above that, and crowning the whole thing — a French mansard roof that ran two full stories tall. The kind of double-decker slope you used to see all over Paris.
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| Providence City Hall Doyle funeral |
It actually predated City Hall. The cornerstone for City Hall wasn't laid until 1874, the year after the Exchange opened. So if you were standing in Exchange Place in the 1870s, the Butler Exchange basically was the skyline. Everything else around it was still small wooden and brick houses with little shops on the ground floor. This thing dominated.
The Sanborn maps tell you exactly how it was built — iron posts, iron storefronts, brick middle floors, that wood-framed roof structure up top.
What Went On Inside
This place had everything.
The Providence Public Library opened in its second floor in February 1878 — their first home ever, before they moved to Snow Street and eventually to where they live today on Empire Street. So if you've ever borrowed a book in this city, the lineage starts in the Butler Exchange.
The Rhode Island Commercial School moved in by 1907. In 1916, it bought and merged with the local Bryant & Stratton outfit — which means the Butler Exchange is essentially where Bryant University was born. Forty-five years of business education running out of those upper floors.
The street-level shops were a who's-who of old Providence: Dodge and Camfield grocers, Brown Brothers mill supplies, Waite Auto Supply, a restaurant called The Coffee Pot tucked under the lobby stairs. Upstairs were lawyers, doctors, dentists, patent attorneys, music teachers, gown makers (the Tirocchi sisters had their workshop on the fourth floor), insurance agents, the Republican State Committee, the Rhode Island Women's Christian Temperance Union, the Rhode Island Sunday School Association.
In other words — it was downtown. The whole working life of the city, stacked six stories high in one block.
The Fire
A fire tore through the Butler Exchange and gutted it badly enough that the building couldn't be saved. Remember those wood-framed upper floors under the mansard roof? You can guess how that went. The school relocated. The shops scattered. By the end of the year, demolition crews were on site and the rest of it came down.
A 52-year run. Ended in smoke.
What Came Next
The Industrial Trust Company looked at that empty lot and decided to build something Providence had never seen. They hired Walker & Gillette, a New York firm, to design a 26-story Art Deco tower with stepped setbacks borrowed from Manhattan's brand-new zoning laws. When it opened in 1928, it was the tallest building in New England, and it stayed that way for over twenty years.
We call it the Superman Building now. Some say it picked up the nickname in the '50s because it looked like the Daily Planet building from the TV show.
Bank of America walked out in 2013. The building has sat empty for over a decade — pockmarked with missing limestone, wrapped in scaffolding to keep chunks from falling on people walking past. Listed on the National Trust for Historic Preservation's Most Endangered Places in 2019. Still no real plan that's stuck.
Here's the Loop
The Butler Exchange burned in 1925 and got replaced by a tower that's now itself sitting empty, slowly losing its glow.
The replacement is endangered.
The replacement of the replacement might be next.
Why I Care About This One
This is the whole reason I shoot what I shoot.
We only know what the Butler Exchange looked like because people photographed it. The Providence Public Library has rooms full of glass plates, postcards, and street scenes of that building — and that's the only reason something that's been gone for a hundred years can still pull you in. Still make you feel something. Still tell you what Kennedy Plaza used to be.
Downtown is going to keep changing. The Superman Building's fate is still getting fought over in court. The buildings around it have already been replaced once or twice. Brown is reshaping the East Side. Mills are coming down up in Pawtucket and Central Falls.
Take the photo while the building's still there. That's the whole job.
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| The Butler Exchange Building in Providence, RI under construction. |
Run of the Mill is what I do over at Filmmaker Dave — documenting Providence and the rest of New England before it disappears for good. Hit the link for everything I'm working on, including prints if you want a piece of the city on your wall.
More soon.
Research sources: ArtInRuins, Lost New England, Providence Preservation Society, Buildings of New England, Wikipedia
#PVD #ProvidenceRI #KennedyPlaza #SupermanBuilding #FilmmakerDave #RunOfTheMill #ProvidenceHistory #ButlerExchange #LostProvidence #RhodeIsland
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