The lure of suburbia after 1950 produced a massive exodus to the suburbs by city dwellers fed up with deteriorating school systems, rising crime rates, and older housing. Their flight was facilitated by dramatic improvements in the state's highway system, especially with the accelerated pace of Route 95 construction beginning in 1960. In the census of 1950 Providence had a population of 248,674; two decades later that number had dwindled to 179,116, the largest proportionate out-migration of any major city in the United States.
The inner-city's loss of population was suburbia's gain: the population of Warwick doubled between 1950 and 1980 (from 43,028 to 87,123); the city of Cranston experienced a similar though less dramatic gain.
Latest census figures indicate that during the 1970's only two states -- Rhode Island and New York -- suffered a loss in population. During the 1970s the tidal wave of out-migration from the cities ebbed. The growth of Rhode Island's suburban communities slowed almost to a halt.
Rural towns, conversely, experienced rapid growth during the 1970s. Charlestown, Glocester, Narragansett, Scituate, and West Greenwich all recorded increases in population of 40 percent or more. In 1980 Central Falls remained the most densely populated municipality with approximately 14,160 residents per square mile.
Demographically, the relaxation of federal immigration quotas by the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 has resulted in a new influx of foreign-born residents. especially Portuguese, Hispanics, and Southeast Asians. Nearly 65 percent of all Rhode Islanders claim Roman Catholicism as their religion -- the highest percentage of any state in the nation. Rhode Island women outnumber men by almost 45,000.
In the post-war years, retail facilities were established in the suburbs to meet the needs of those growing communities. The 233)-acre Garden City development, established in 1947, epitomized the process of suburbanization in Rhode Island: this "city within a city" offered a variety of housing styles, a school, and open space, as well as the state's first suburban shopping center.
The completion of Routes 95 in 1966 and 295 two years later produced profound changes in the shopping habits or Rhode Islanders. The intersection of these superhighways just east of Natick offered an ideal location for commercial development. This area was selected as the location for the Midland Mall, the state's first enclosed, climate-controlled shopping plaza (the Arcade, in Providence, built in 1828, was the nation's first enclosed shopping mall). Completed in 1968, it was joined four years later by the equally impressive Warwick Mall. Convenient access, as well as national chains Iike Sears and J.C. Penney and large Boston-based anchor retailers, such as Filene's and Jordan Marsh, brought shoppers from far beyond the Warwick area. The opening of Lincoln Mall in 1975 at the confluence of Routes 295 and 146 drew shoppers from the region's northern sector. One by one Providence's better known retailers -- W.T. Grant, City Hall Hardware, J.J. Newberry, Shepards, and, finally, the Outlet Company -- closed their doors. By the early 1970s the state's several down town areas were pockmarked with empty storefronts and abandoned theaters. Concern grew among city officials that something must be done to reverse a trend that was afflicting Providence, Pawtucket, Woonsocket, and other Northeastern cities.
The response of Rhode Island's urban centers to the challenge of suburbanization was similar in many respects. It combined urban renewal through clearance or substandard housing with the ofttimes conflicting but equally strong commitment to preserve the community's rich architectural heritage. Threatened demolition of Newport's historic William Hunter House in 1945 resulted in the formation of the Preservation Society of Newport County. Three ); Bars later the society assumed care of the lavish Vanderbilt mansion, The Breakers. By 1980 the society operated six Bellevue Avenue mansions that were toured by more than three-quarters of a million visitors. Other preservation efforts included Operation Clapboard, founded in 1963, and the Newport Restoration Foundation, established five years later by multimillionaire tobacco heiress Doris Duke. These efforts were, in most cases, complemented by the work of the Redevelopment Agency of Newport, which in 1962 implemented a multiyear revitalization plan that resulted in the transformation of Thames Street, Long Wharf, and Brick Market. A new thoroughfare -- America's Cup Avenue -- was constructed to connect Connell Highway with Memorial Boulevard. The derelict torpedo station on Goat Island was cleared to make way for a marina, an apartment complex, and a luxury hotel.
In the capital city the efforts of a reorganized City Plan Commission were strengthened by the establishment of the Providence Redevelopment Agency in 1948. The deterioration of housing stock on lower College Hill combined with growing concern over Brown University's encroachment on the area's residential housing stock to provide the impetus for the creation of the Providence Preservation Society in 1956. Working in concert with the City Plan Commission, the PPS in 1959 prepared a pathbreaking report entitled College Hill: Demonstration Study of Historic Area Renewal that sparked the restoration of Benefit Street and its immediate environs. Success was due in large part to aesthetically-oriented private investors, especially Mrs. Malcom G. Chace, Jr�, who acquired and restored for resale about forty; houses on College Hill. Many of these structures are now visited in the Preservation Society's walking tours.
The Plan Commission itself produced a master blueprint for downtown renewal in 1960. The first of the commission imaginative recommendations to be implemented was the construction of a pedestrian shopping mall on Westminster Street from Dorrance to Aborn. The project was begun in 1964 and completed a year later. The master plan's goal of "strengthening the city's retail core" via a shopping mall, however, has not been realized, and extensive renovations to the area in 1979 have yet to revive the commercial prominence the strip enjoyed earlier in the century.
The pace of renewal and revitalization in the 1960s, however, did begin to quicken. Weybosset Hill, Randall Square, and Lippitt Hill began their remarkable transformation into modern residential and commercial centers. Massive amounts of "Model Cities" money and, later, Community Development funds were funneled into Rhode Island's urban centers in an effort to halt urban blight.
The state did not fare as well in meeting the challenge of nature's unpredictable onslaughts. On August 31, 1954, Hurricane Carol slammed Rhode Island with gusts reaching 115 miles per hour. Southern coastal areas were particularly hard hit. Almost 3,800 homes were destroyed and nineteen lives lost. The downtown area of Providence was inundated, with water reaching thirteen feet above mean high water level -- slightly less than a foot below the 1938 record. In all, property damage was estimated in excess of $90,000,000.
Less than a year later, on August 19, 1955, Hurricane Diane brought the worst flooding in the state's history. More than six inches of rain wreaked havoc in the Blackstone Valley as all the dams on the Blackstone and Mill rivers were breached. Flood waters cut Woonsocket in half, leaving stores and homes under tons of mud. Losses there reached $170,000,000. Fears of recurrent deluges prompted Rhode Island voters to approve funding for the construction of a flood control system in Woonsocket and a hurricane barrier across the Providence River. Completed in 1966, the hurricane barrier has been used on a couple of occasions.
A natural disaster of another sort of occured on February 6, 1978, when the state was visited by the worst snowstorm in its recorded history. The heavy snowfall caught unsuspecting motorists during the afternoon rush hours, resulting in an unprecedented traffic jam on Route 95. Providence streets were in utter chaos as thousands abandoned their cars. Snowfall estimates varied from sixteen inches along the southeastern coast to a reported fifty-five inches in the Manville section of Lincoln. Federal troops were airlifted from southern bases to help local army and air National Guard units dig the state out. On February 13 -- one week after it all began -- commuter traffic was allowed into downtown Providence. The "Blizzard of '78" claimed twenty-one lives and resulted in $110,000,000 lost in gross products and wages.
Though the United States military had helped to restore Rhode Island from nature's devastation in 1978, it caused economic shockwaves five years earlier. Between 1945 and 1973 the United States Navy was the state's largest civilian employer, and the arrival in Newport of the Cruiser-Destroyer Force of the United States Atlantic Fleet in 1952 had produced a major influx of naval personnel. But the military bubble burst in 1973 with the federal government's decision to relocate the destroyer force to southern ports. This was a tremendous shock to Newport especially, though the stimulation it gave to the city's tourist trade ultimately erased the loss and proved to be a boon in the long run.
Though much of the Naval activity in the area was gone, for awhile the state continued to rely on defense related industry. The Electric Boat Division of General Dynamics for a number of years ran a major operation at the former Quomset Point naval air facility. By the mid-1990s this began to wind down as the need for submarines declined with the end of the Cold War. Presently the growing metals and machinery industry dominates manufacturing and employs well over 3O percent of the industrial work force. This sector includes primary metals (iron and steel foundries, forges, and smelting and refining plants), fabricated metals (valves, fittings, screws, pipe, hardware, nails, cutlery, wire, tin cans, tubes, containers, and hand tools), machinery (machine tools and business machines), and electrical equipment (motors, generators, appliances, and wiring devices).
Next in significance is jewelry and silverware (Providence is the costume jewelry capital of the country). followed by textiles (yam, thread, and fabric mills, dyeing and finishing plants, and lace mills) and rubber products. Newer growth industries are electronics, instrumentation, chemicals, plastics, and transportation equipment.
The greatest expansion in the labor force has taken place in government service, wholesale and retail trade, transportation, finance and insurance, private education, health care, business and repair services, and the professions. Health service providers, for example, came to employ more people than the state's entire jewelry industry (33,088 vs. 31.237). The tourist and convention business has a major impact on the economy, with Newport, the South County beaches, and Providence the prime sites -- the Atlantic Tuna Derby was first conducted in Galillee in 1953; in addition toall its other charms, Newport hosted the Tall Ships regatta in 1976.
There were many changes during this period with respect to educational institutions. Newport College-Salve Regina was founded in Newport in 1947 as a women's college and is now co-educational. Johnson & Wales College, founded in 1914, became a degree-granting institution in 1963, and its Culinary Institute, started in the Seventies, has gained a nationwide reputation. Providence-Barrington Bible College left Capitol Hill in the early 1960s, shortening its name to fit its new site. Providence College was able to expand its facilities with its acquisition of the former Chapin Hospital property, and is now part of the nine- college Big East Conference. Roger Williams grew from a two year college based at the Providence YMCA to a four-year institution ( 1967 ) and moved to a waterfront site in Bristol in 1969. Two years later Bryant College (established in 1863) departed from its sprawling East Side campus for a beautiful site in Smithfield. Brown University continued in popularity, merging with Pembroke College in 1971, and is currently the most sought after of the ivy league schools; it expanded its physical plant by acquiring the Providence facilities of Bryant. A state junior college (now CCRI) was opened in September 1964 and took residence in the former Brown and Sharpe complex in Providence, and opened its Knight campus in Warwick in 1972 and its Flanagan campus in Lincoln in 1976. Rhode Island College moved from downtown Providence to a 125-acre campus in the Mount Pleasant section. The University of Rhode Island, founded as a land-grant college in 1892, received its present name in 1951 and was designated as a sea-grant college in 1971; it has undergone a great rate of expansion and presently has in excess of 11,000 undergraduate and graduate students. Rhode Island School of Design firmly established itself as one of the leading design schools in the country, and during this period, built a dormitory-cafeteria complex on College Hill overlooking the city.
In the political realm, Rhode Island continued the trend established by the New Deal years: of the ten governors to hold office from 1941 to 1983, only two were Republicans, serving for eight of those forty-two years; in the same forty-two-year period there was one Republican lieutenant governor (serving two years), one Republican secretary of state(presently serving), two Republican attorneys general (serving eight years), and the general treasurer's office has been continually occupied by a Democrat for those forty-two years.
In recent times the cities -- with the sole exception of Cranston and the three-term tenure of Providence Mayor Vincent A. Cianci, Jr�, (a Republican for his first two terms, then an Independent) -- have been dominated by the Democratic Party, as has been the General Assembly. A special Senate election in 1983 -- ordered by the Federal Court upon the failure of the General Assembly to properly redistrict the Senate after the 1980 census -- however, resulted in the election of twenty-one Republicans to the upper chamber, the highest number by far since the reapportionment of the mid-1960s.
During the post-World War II era, many Rhode Island politicians attained national prominence. Theodore Francis Green (who went to the U.S. Senate in 1937) became chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in 1957 at the age of eighty nine. John O. Pastore became the first person of Italian ancestry to serve in the U.S. Senate. In the House, John E. Fogarty (1941- 1967) and Aime J. Forand (1937-1939, 1941-1961) developed nationwide reputations in the area of government-sponsored health care.
The most successful and durable Republican of the era has been John H. Chafee, who, after three terms as governor (1963- 1969) served as Secretary of the Navy (1969-1972). Herbert F. DeSimone, after two terms as attorney general ( 1967- 1971), served as Assistant Secretary, U.S. Department of Transportation (1971- 1972). The highest ranking federal appointee in recent years has been G. William Miller, former board chairman of Textron, Inc., who served first as chairman of the Federal Reserve Board (1978) and then as Secretary of the Treasury (1979-1981).
J. Howard McGrath was undoubtedly the state's most versatile politician: he spent the war years as Rhode Island's governor; he was appointed U.S. Solicitor General by President Truman; in 1946, he was elected to the U.S. Senate; the following year he became Democratic National Chairman; in 1949, McGrath gave up his Senate seat to become U.S. Attorney General.
On the local stage, Democrat Dennis J. Roberts enjoyed many years in office that included a ten-year reign as Mayor of Providence (1941-1951) followed by four terms as governor (1951-1959). Turning Roberts out of office proved to be no mean feat as Republican Christopher Del Sesto had to win the popular vote in two successive elections before taking over. The first of those, the Long Count of 1956, centered nationwide attention upon the Rhode Island political scene.
After the election of 1956, the primary law -- adopted in 1947 (Rhode Island was the next to the last of all the states to allow primary contest) -- became a significant factor in Democratic party politics at the state level. Prior to the 1958 election, the primary was of no consequence in affecting statewide offices as all endorsed candidates had won the primary of 1948 and, in the elections thereafter, there had been only one challenge of a Democratic endorsee up to and including the election of 1956. However, the lingering hostilities brought about after the 1956 election by the invalidating of 4,954 ballots and the cancellation of the Certificate of Election awarded Del Sesto by the Board of Elections created hard-fought Democratic primary battles in the 1958 campaign involving the candidates for governor (Lieutenant Governor Armand H. Cote challenged Roberts and got 44 percent of the vote), lieutenant governor, secretary of state, and attorney general; all the endorsed candidates won. In 1960, Claiborne Pell became the first to beat a Democratic endorsee in a statewide primary. Fourteen years later, Edward P. Beard took the primary route to unseat the endorsed incumbent, Democrat Congressman Robert O. Tiernan. In 1976, businessman Richard Lorber, running unendorsed, defeated then-Governor Philip W. Noel in the Democratic primary for U.S. Senate. In 1972, the presidential-preference primary was introduced in Rhode Island. In the past three presidential elections, it has drawn a small voter turnout.
Vincent A. Cianci, Jr�, shocked politicos in 1974 and began a productive yet controversial three-term tenure as mayor of Providence by unseating encumbent Mayor Joseph A. Doorley in a heated campaign.
In recent years women and minorities are exerting and increasingly significant influence in local and state politics. In 1980, Republican Claudine Schneider became the first woman elected to Congress from the state; two years later Republican Susan L, Farmer was elected as secretary of state and became Rhode Island's first female general officer; and Republican Lila Sapinsley presided as minority leader of the state senate. Interestingly, the Republican party was the first in modern times to endorse a woman for statewide office when Ruth M. Briggs ran for the U.S. Senate in 1966.
Blacks have participated more widely in elected offices in recent years. The first black was elected to the House in 1966, while in 1982 South Side voters elected the state's first black senator. Newport councilman Paul Gaines became that city's first black mayor in 1980. Providence's new fifteen member city council included two blacks.
About three quarters of the state's municipalities have adopted a home-rule charter since that option was made available to them by constitutional amendment in 1951 . Under its provisions two cities (Newport and East Providence) and several towns have adopted the manager form of government. In the smaller communities the famous New England town meetings are still in use, whereby the town's eligible voters assemble to directly approve the municipal budget, set the tax levy, and decide other local measures. In 1964 a state constitutional convention was held to revise or replace the state's basic law. The electorate rejected the convention's proposals in 1968 by a four-to-one margin. A limited convention in 1973 proposed seven constitutional amendments, five of which were approved by the state's voters, including one that repealed the longstanding ban on lotteries.
This period has been one of unsettled economic conditions. The state's ever-growing need for revenue saw the sales tax -- introduced in 1947 at a 1 percent rate -- rise to 6 percent. The income tax was first introduced in February, 1971, as a temporary tax by Governor Frank Licht (1969-1973); by July of the same year, it became a permanent tax at a rate of 15 percent of each taxpayer's federal income tax. Stabilized within eleven years, the income-tax rate rose over 78 percent to 26.75 for 1983. In the same eleven year period, state expenditures increased approximately 16.4 percent: from $286 million to $756 million. The corporate tax rate for 1983 is set at 9 percent, scheduled to be reduced to 8 percent for 1984. In 1982, state-tax revenues totalled approximately $665 million. At the municipal level, $531 million was levied in taxes in 1983 by the thirty-nine communities. In 1982, Rhode Island was ranked the ninth highest in per capita property-tax collections in the country; measured according to personal income, Rhode Island's property taxes ranked sixth highest nationally at $50.23 per $1,000 of income.
The continued rise in taxes at all levels, coupled with an epidemic of plant closings, gave rise to mounting apprehension over the economic future of the state. In response to this loss of confidence in the state's economy, Governor J. Joseph Garrahy (1977-85; lieutenant governor 1969-1976) in 1982 announced his creation of a Strategic Development Commission, which he charged with formulating an "economic strategy for the future.'' After studying the economic scene, the Commission concluded that ''Rhode Island's economy has been in a holding pattern'' for the past twenty years, "scraping together enough jobs to stave off disaster, but suffering a steady decline in relative income."
High energy costs and taxes, the perception of state government as anti-business, and the fact that Rhode Island factory workers are among the lowest paid in the country are frequently cited as prime causes for the state's ailing economy. A 1983 national study concluded that of the forty-eight contiguous states, Rhode Island ranked next to last in "attractiveness of business climate."
The product of the Commission appointed by Governor Garrhy was the so-called Greenhouse Compact, which proposes to create sixty thousand new jobs via a grant-and-loan program, stepped-up job-training programs, and the creation of four research "greenhouses" designed to stimulate new industrial growth. The plan would cost almost $250 million, paid for in part by payroll and income taxes, public employee pension funds, and two bond issues. Voters would have an opportunity to voice their opinions regarding this new industrial-policy approach to state economics at the ballot box in 1984.
Rhode Islanders, in approaching the twenty-first century, can point to the positive signs of a rejuvenated capital city boasting revitalized historic districts, nationally recognized educational and cultural institutions, and a building boom that includes the rehabilitation of historic buildings in the financial district as well as the construction of a federal building, a courthouse, and two new office towers. In addition, the Capitol Center Project, begun in 1982, resulted in the relocation of existing railroad tracks to the base of Capitol Hill, the erection of a new railroad terminal, and the construction of buildings for office and residential use. Newport's renaissance, sparked by the erection of the Newport Bridge and fueled by its growing reputation as a tourist mecca, will continue, as will the attractiveness of Rhode Island's rural communities for further residential development.
Present-day Rhode Islanders are striving to preserve the best of their heritage while improving the quality of life for future generations.
