A History of Kennedy Plaza

A History of Kennedy Plaza. Kennedy Plaza. , In 1906, the Soldiers and Sailors Monument was moved to the center of Exchange Place, half way between City Hall and the rising Federal Building. Debate over Exchange Place continued until 1912, when the City Council approved creation of the landscaped mall. In 1913, the council approved construction of a trolley shelter at the east end of the mall. By 1914, with completion of the shelter, designed by local architects Martin and Hall, the mall reached the configuration it retained for more than fifty years. In 1925, The Hiker, memorializing the Spanish American War, was dedicated., The new Exchange Place became a magnet for important buildings. For years, Providence's tallest buildings located here, beginning with the Providence Biltmore Hotel (1922; Warren and Wetmore, New York, architects) and the Industrial Trust Company (1928; Walker and Gillette, New York, architects) and continuing with Hospital Trust Tower (1973; John Carl Warnecke and Associates, Los Angeles, architects) and Fleet Center (1985; Helmut Obata Kassabuam, St. Louis, architects). A new Post Office by Jackson, Robertson and Adams was built just north of the Federal Building in 1939., As the city's transportation center, Exchange Place saw the evolution of vehicles. Electric trolleys were gradually replaced: by buses in 1925 and trackless trolleys in 1935. The last streetcar ran in 1948; the final trackless trolley, in 1955. In 1964, Exchange Place was renamed Kennedy Plaza in memory of recently assassinated president John F. Kennedy., Major changes occurred in Kennedy Plaza in the 1980s. To create a central transit center, Kennedy Plaza became an auto-restricted zone in 1984. The Plaza was widened to the north, and the mall's west end was extended toward City Hall beyond the 1914 Trolley Shelter, which had become a restaurant in 1981. The mall became a center island exclusively for buses., In the late 1990s, the Rhode Island Public Transit Authority (RIPTA), organized in 1966, began planning studies to reconfigure traffic flow, bus berthing, and the center island and to exchange the city's entral public space by creating an attractive pedestrian space in front of City Hall. In 1999, RIPTA launched a downtown circulator system, the Providence LINK, with vintage-style trolleys powered by a clean fuel - compressed natural gas. In the fall of 2000, RIPTA began to reconstruct the Plaza's central island for a state-of-the-art passenger terminal, incorporating the restored 1914 trolley shelter, and modern bus berths around an oval-shape central island. The Soldiers and Sailors Monument and The Hiker were refurbished and installed near their original locations. The Rhode Island Public Transit Authority's Intermodal Transportation Center in Kennedy Plaza opened in 2002., We thank Professor Scott Molloy of the University of Rhode Island and Wm McKenzie Woodward, Architectural Historian, Rhode Island Historical Preservation and Heritage Commission, for their contributions to this project., [Captions:] , The Hiker was dedicated in 1925 and has been moved several times since, most recently in 2000 for the Kennedy Plaza Reconstruction Plaza., By 1943, Exchange Plaza was bustling with electric streetcars and a grid of rail tracks. The original trolley shelter, built in 1914, can be seen in the upper left corner., In 1999, RIPTA reintroduced the trolley to Providence. The LINK trolleys run on compressed natural gas (CNG)., As part of the 2000 - 2002 Kennedy Plaza Reconstruction project the Soldiers and Sailors monument was disassembled and moved into storage during construction. It was moved back into the new Kennedy Plaza upon completion.