Information

After 35 years of the same 1970s blank architecture, the City finally decided that the hotel needed a complete revamp, and tore the structure down… wouldn’t that be nice. Instead, the Holiday Inn was acquired by a Hilton in 2005, and they gave it a facelift – kinda. They simply refaced the building with some sort of material (DryVit, I think) that has a stucco look to it, made the windows smaller (huh?), and generally “freshened” the old hotel up. We are told that the rooms and amenities have been upgraded as well, and the southeast side will be getting a new glass enclosure thing for a restaurant and expanded ballroom space.

The old Holiday Inn was ugly, but lets wait and see what this stucco stuff will look like in ten years. If it is DryVit, I have heard bad things about the way it weathers (esp. in New England and esp. near a smoggy, sooty highway), so we may be pining for the old Holiday Inn and its quaint, but ugly, roadside demeanor before too long.

History

(from the RIHPHC 1979 Downtown Survey, Wm McKenzie Woodward) Allen O'Hara, Incorprated, architect. 13-story, reinforced-concrete structure with pier-and-spandrel archticulation of northeast and southwest elevations, blank northwest and southeast elevations, and a porte-cochere entrance (literally, a porch large enough for a carriage to pass through. Nowadays, this means a covered passenger drop-off area). The first hotel erected in Providence after the Biltmore opening in 1922, the Holiday Inn provided modern accomodations in contrast to the increasingly shabby quarters of the Biltmore in the early 1970s. With the decline and closing of the Biltmore and other Downtown hotels, the Holiday Inn, with the Marriott Inn at Randall Square, monopolized the market for tourists, travelling salesmen, and convention-goers during the 1970s.

Sited near the exit ramp of Route I-95 and eminently visible to high-speed automobiles travelling the highway, the 275 room Holiday Inn, with its nationally known neon logo atop this monolithic structure, beckons the weary motorist. It typifies the bland statements made by architectural firms designing for national franchises which depend more on recognizable conformity than on suitability of location or local building traditions.

Anecdotes

Alex  I believe you’re mistaken about the skywalk. Seems to be connecting the DD Center with the Convention Center. Although, the old police station just came down so we’ll see...

jerry  That place is such an eyesore. And now with an even uglier new facade, some nasty condos by the Procaciannti Group, and a crappy steakhouse it’s about to get even nastier.

you bitch too much  You bitch too much and you’re pictures suck and aren’t up-to-date. FYI, it wasn’t acquired by a Hilton, it was bought by the Procaciannti Group and the “glass-enclosed restaurant thingy” is a Shula’s 347 Steakhouse. Oh, you forgot to add that there would be a 30 story Hilton Residences built across the street and that there would be a skywalk. But that’s ok, keep complaining about nonsense that doesn’t even make sense.

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