The Providence, Rhode Island City Hall is leaking – and ancient documents are in crisis. The following excerpt is from an extensive article by Philip Marcelo, in the February 17, 2009 edition of the Providence Journal.
PROVIDENCE — The dome atop City Hall, the symbol of the city’s ambitions at the height of its 19th-century
industrial prowess — and of municipal corruption in a more recent era –– is leaking, and valuable city records, some nearly 400 years old, are threatened, city officials say.
Cracked plaster marks where water from the dome has trickled down the walls in the City Archives, the collection of records and historic artifacts housed in the floors directly below the dome. Archival boxes holding old photos are warped and stained from sitting in puddles of standing water. Heavy, opaque plastic tarps cover parts of bookshelves.
“The dome has been deteriorating for 40 to 50 years,” said City Archivist John T. Myers, who has worked in the archives office for 20 years. “It has gotten increasingly worse. It needs attention.”
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The City Archives are the repository of the city’s oldest documents and artifacts, from birth records to old street layouts, real estate deeds and large oil paintings of the city’s mayors. It takes up the top floor of City Hall.
Some records are from the mid-1600s, when Providence was just a small town on Narragansett Bay. The office, created in the 1970s, also maintains the city’s old payroll and personnel records.
The most frequently used records –– vital statistics and land records –– are stored in a main room on the fifth floor, which has a soaring ceiling and a wraparound balcony, not unlike a room in an old, stately library.
Records are also stored in the hallways and atrium areas on the fifth floor. Some records sit on shelves in the drafty and unfinished dome interior, one floor above the archives and accessible only through a narrow metal staircase behind a padlocked gate near the archive entry.