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Stringcourse A Providence Paper On What Buildings Used To Be

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Step 1 of five

Still doing the first job

Put up for one purpose and still at it, which in a city that rebuilds itself this often is rarer than it sounds and worth going to look at while it lasts.

The two fronts at this step

  1. Step 1 of 5, still doing the first jobA Firehouse Still Running EnginesBuilt for apparatus in the 1890s and holding apparatus now. The rarest step on this axis and the easiest to read, because the door tells you before anything else does.
  2. Step 1 of 5, still doing the first jobA Pumphouse That Never StoppedA small brick building on a fenced lot, put up to move water and still moving it. Nothing about it has been marketed, restyled or reused, which is why it is worth an hour.

The five steps

  1. Step 1 of 5Still doing the first jobPut up for one purpose and still at it, which in a city that rebuilds itself this often is rarer than it sounds and worth going to look at while it lasts.
  2. Step 2 of 5New work in the old shellThe use inside has changed completely and the building has not. The most common step in this city and the one that rewards a slow walk past the outside.
  3. Step 3 of 5Pieces kept inside something newThe building came down and parts of it did not: a front, a stair, a run of iron columns, held inside whatever replaced it.
  4. Step 4 of 5The shape left in the groundNothing stands. The outline is still legible in a curb line, a change of paving, a wall that stops where a building used to start.
  5. Step 5 of 5Nothing left but the nameThe last step. No fabric at all, and a name still in use for a corner, a stop or a block, attached now to something that has no connection to it.