Brown U. is renovating a 1928 costume-jewelry factory to house its medical school. (Ellenzweig renderings)
Providence, R.I. — Brown University was looking for architects for an $80-million home for its Warren Alpert Medical School when the economy imploded two years ago, forcing the university to rethink its plans. Instead of putting up a new building on an empty lot in Providence’s Jewelry District, the university decided to gut and renovate an existing structure it owned just across the street — a 1928 factory where the Brier Manufacturing Company once made costume jewelry with the brand name Little Nemo.
The change of plans brought some challenges. Tenants in the Little Nemo building, which had been commercial office space since 1972, had to be relocated. And Ellenzweig, the architecture firm that the university eventually hired, had to create an interior design that worked around the factory’s imposing concrete columns, which are on a 20-foot grid. But the renovation will offer the medical school all the same features it would have enjoyed in a brand-new structure — in fact, the renovated building will have slightly more space than would have been in the new building, says Michael J. McCormick, the university’s assistant vice president for planning, design, and construction.
And the project’s price tag? It was cut almost in half, to $45-million, Mr. McCormick says.
The building, located at Richmond and Ship Streets, is one of eight that Brown purchased several years ago in the Jewelry District, for decades a hub of costume-jewelry manufacturing and before that a neighborhood of ship chandlers. Now the district’s late-19th and early-20th-century factories have become residential and commercial buildings, some of them quite elegant. And the imminent removal of an elevated highway that had cut the Jewelry District off from downtown Providence is expected to be a big boon to the neighborhood, Mr. McCormick says. The piers of the bridge that carried the highway across the Providence River are to be reused for a pedestrian crossing that will make it about a 10- or 15-minute walk to Brown’s main campus. Land that had held on- and off-ramps will become a park.
Brown previously renovated the nearby Speidel watch-band building as a molecular-medicine lab. A small medical-device manufacturer has since moved in beside it, creating the nucleus of a medical-science district. For medical students, a big benefit of the new location will be proximity to Hasbro, Rhode Island, and Women & Infants Hospitals, all located on the south side of the Jewelry District.
But the renovated factory will be an attraction in its own right. Ellenzweig’s plans call for cutting a new atrium in the middle of the building as well as for replacing some of the concrete columns with a huge truss to accommodate a pair of open 120-seat lecture halls. Other columns will remain visible, along with the building’s striking waffle-cut ceilings—one goal of the renovation, Mr. McCormick says, is to “let the historic building be the historic building.” The facility will have anatomy labs, classrooms, offices, a library, social spaces for students, and a corner cafe open to the public. A rooftop terrace will offer views of the river and the main campus.
The renovation, due to be completed a year from now, is aiming for LEED gold certification, Mr. McCormick says. It will also let the medical school increase class size from 90 to 120 students. In keeping with an agreement between the city and the university, the building will remain on the Providence tax rolls for a total of 15 years. The university will make full tax payments for five years, then pay at a two-thirds rate for another five years and at a one-third level for the final five.
Several floors’ worth of concrete will be removed to create an atrium.
The interior will still show off the structure’s waffle-cut concrete ceilings.
This building, formerly Speidel’s watch-band factory, now houses the university’s molecular-medicine labs. (Chronicle photographs by Lawrence Biemiller)
