Text Your BFF Who's A Rhody History Fan Because They'll Flip For These Throwbacks
I have a friend who regularly posts these great old photos of Providence on his Facebook and Insta(gram).
Another who is a Rhody transplant and lives for the local history does an occasional blog post on one topic or another that most of us never learned thing one about in public school back in the 1970’s and 80’s.
If (like me) you’re curious about such things, and you’re also on Twitter and IG, you’ll get a thrill from giving the Providence City Archives accounts a follow.
PVD Image Courtesy Of The Providence City Archives Instagram
Their posts are delightfully odd treasure troves of black and white photos and intriguing tidbits of long forgotten PVD history, including:
a menu from what was once the Dexter Asylum (1828 - 1957) located on land that’s now part of the Brown University athletic department (For the record, it was pretty heavy on the white bread. Guess no one was too worried about carbs or bleached flour in those days.)
a postcard picture of City Hall dating back to 1908 (Remember when we used to send postcards?)
a throwback to the political cartoon on the front page of the Providence Journal on January 7, 1920, after the RI General Assembly had voted to ratify the woman’s suffrage amendment
a nod to Hasbro’s Mr. Potato Head and the time he “quit smoking” (1987) by way of having the tobacco pipe taken out of his collection of add-ons and accessories
a poll and online debate about whether my old neighborhood should be (is?) considered The West End or The West Side (I like to say I lived there before it was hep to do so.)
a color photo of ye olde Westminster Mall (Yessss, that part of Westminster Street was bricked up into a walking mall from approximately 1964 until 1989.) that screams 1970’s, complete with a wide-tie-wearing guy front and center-ish, which brings to mind a certain Billy Joel lyric
Providence Business District Photo By kickstand/iStock /Getty Images
You probably won’t be able to find out which PVD disco Andre Leon Talley and his friends frequented during the very early 70’s while he was studying for his Master’s in French Lit at Brown. (I met and heard ALT speak at length about his time in Providence at an event last fall at The Graduate, nee Biltmore.)
But imagine the info you’ll have at you disposal to help ramp up the interesting conversation at your next mixer, cocktail party, or what have you. (Don’t know about you, but I tend to fall back on the weather, which can wind up being a one way ticket to yawnsville for all involved.)
So, whether you consider yourself a Rhody history buff or not, odds are that you will find yourself getting caught up in this quirky, little local corner of Twitter and the Insta-verse.
*This post has been updated and revised from one that appeared on the site previously.