Way Down Yonder in Pawtucket, Part II

From Dave Brigham:

I ended my first post about Pawtucket by discussing a metal sculpture of Rev. William Blackstone, who is considered Rhode Island's first permanent English settler (see October 23, 2026, "Way Down Yonder in Pawtucket, Part I"). This second installment begins with a photo I made while crossing the river named for the minister, along the Morris Nathanson Bridge.

This is the former George H. Fuller & Son factory building. Located at 151 Exchange Street, the mill was once a hub for making parts for jewelry, including clasps and hooks, according to a Valley Breeze article I found online. According to the City of Pawtucket web site, the city has 300 diversified industries, with the three largest being jewelry and silverware, metals and textiles. I mentioned a few former jewelry makers in the first Pawtucket post.

The Fuller building dates to the 1880s. In 2020, the Pawtucket Planning Commission approved a revised plan by a developer to revitalize the old mill. The plan called for converting the building to 22 apartments. While other old mill buildings in this neighborhood have been switched over to residential or commercial use, I'm uncertain whether the Fuller plan has been put into effect.

Across Exchange Court from the old Fuller factory is another former industrial site that's been beautifully restored. I only shot the rear of the building, because I love the contrast between the old and new.

Known as the Design Exchange, this four-story brick building was previously part of the Rhode Island Cardboard Company complex constructed in 1880, per the web site for LLB Architects, the firm behind the redesign. The building was so named "for its focus on attracting creative enterprises," the web site continues. The architecture firm has its office in the building.

Across Exchange Street is the former Pawtucket Armory.

Completed in 1895, the armory is "composed of two distinct sections: a 3 1/2-story, rectangular main block facing Exchange Street, and a 140-foot by 80-foot gable-roofed drill hall which stretches along Fountain Street," per Art in Ruins. For decades, this place was witness to all sorts of, you know, armory-related stuff. From 2005 to 2010, after a renovation, the armory housed the Jacqueline M. Walsh School for the Performing and Visual Arts. It is currently home to the Pawtucket Armory Arts Center.

The armory's eastern neighbor is the one-time home of the John W. Little Co., a label and printing business founded in the early 1900s.

The building dates to 1914. Screen printing and embroidery company Mirror Image is now located here.

Around the corner, heading north on Broadway, is Division Brakes, part of a small local chain in business since 1984.

The building dates to 1917. I love the look of the building and the sign.

From here, I headed southwest on Broadway, where I was quite taken by the look of #139.

This funky building was once the carriage house for the Metcalf Mansion, which was built in 1880 next door and burned down a century later. The mansion was built for Henry B. Metcalf, a Boston-born politician and businessman "who served as the Prohibition Party's gubernatorial candidate thrice and vice presidential nominee in 1900," per Wikipedia.

Metcalf "helped to form the Boston Button Company as the firm's senior partner and in 1874 he moved to Rhode Island where he established the Pawtucket Haircloth Company," Wikipedia continues. "He later formed the Campbell Machine Company in Boston which made machinery to make shoes. He later served as a Trustee of Tufts College and also as President of the Trustees of Tufts College." He died in 1904.

In more recent years, a storefront was added to the carriage house. I'm not sure whether this is a residence or a business at this point.

While I often focus on buildings from the late-19th and early-20th centuries, and signs and business dating back many decades, every once in a while my attention is captured by something a bit more modern...and quite confusing.

As I bopped along Broadway, past a stately old church to my left and while enjoying the view across a park of the Blackstone River and downtown Pawtucket, I couldn't help steering my eyes up and to the left.

What the hell am I looking at? I wondered.

Does Pawtucket have an ancient pyramid? A modern megachurch? Or perhaps the ruins of an homage to the Eiffel Tower?

No, no and no. This is what's left of the former Apex Department Store. Developed in the late 1960s on a site that was once several dense urban blocks, the store featured a ziggurat -- a lofty pyramidal structure built in successive stages -- with the name Apex emblazoned on the front. Backing up to Interstate 95, the store had a large parking lot and was in business here until sometime in the early 2000s.

In 2004, the Division of Motor Vehicles, Pawtucket branch, moved into half of the Apex space and stayed there until 2010, per Art in Ruins. Apex still owned the property, and the company's CEO announced a redevelopment plan shortly after the DMV vacated the site. A restaurant, Cresta Bar & Ristorante, moved in 2011 and closed in 2015. No other tenants were located here, as far as I've found.

In 2018, the Boston Red Sox Triple-A affiliate in Pawtucket considered building a new stadium on this site. But that didn't happen. The City of Pawtucket acquired the site in 2021. In August 2026, several proposals to redevelop the site were published by the Providence Journal.

Let's return to that enjoyable view across the Blackstone River from where I shot my first Apex photo.

The buildings in the distance make up Slater Mill, which in 1793 became the first successful water-powered cotton spinning mill in the United States and the first property to be added to the National Register of Historic Places, in November 1966, according to the National Park Service's web site for the complex.

Moses Brown formed a company where machines could spin cotton fiber into thread, but he needed better equipment. "In December 1789, Brown hired Samuel Slater, a recent immigrant from England," per the NPS write-up. "Slater had spent the past seven years working in an English textile mill. He rose from an apprentice to an overseer of machinery and mill construction. Slater determined that Brown’s existing machines would not work. New machines that could card (brush) and spin the cotton would need to be made locally. For several years, Slater worked with local mechanics, like members of the Wilkinson Family, to make new machines. In December 1790, Slater got the machines running. For the first time, workers could produce thread on water powered machines in America.

"In 1793 the firm of Almy, Brown and Slater replaced their experimental workshop with a new mill," seen in the photo above.

I walked a bit more before looping back to Main Street, across from Still on Main, which I wrote about in the first Pawtucket post. On the corner of Main and Maple streets stands the former Pacific National Bank Building, which dates to 1890.

I liked the juxtaposition between the CHECKS CASHED awning and the H&G PROFESSIONAL BUILDING clock.

At this point I made what I eventually realized was an unwise decision: to continue walking in the early-summer heat in search of a diner that I knew I had to see. If I'd really thought about it, and taken into account the fact that I'd already been wandering through Pawtucket for probably 90 minutes and my feet were tired, I would've driven. Nevertheless, I eventually got to the eatery, and found some other cool spots on my way there, and then on my return to the center of the city.

After a bit of aimless wandering, I ended up heading south on Pine Street, over I-95 and then east on Delany Street, where I came across the abandoned St. Mary's School.

Once part of the sprawling St. Mary's Church of the Immaculate Conception complex along Pine and Grace streets, the school shuttered in 2009 due to low enrollment and high costs of maintaining the building. A developer acquired the building at some point, along with a neighboring convent that was part of the parish. While the convent has been converted to condos, the school still sits empty.

The school was built in 1891. St. Mary's was the first Catholic parish in Pawtucket, and the second in Rhode Island, launching in 1830. The church ceased operations in early 2026.

I hit George Street and headed east-southeast until I connected to East Avenue, walked a short distance and gazed upon the Modern Diner.

Old mill towns used to have loads of diners, and many of these are still standing, if not always in business. So I seek them out and am always quite happy when I see one that's still slinging hash, and looking good while doing it.

"The Modern Diner is known for both its diner classics and its variety of ever-changing breakfast specials," per the eatery's web site. "The Pawtucket restaurant was chosen to be the first diner in the nation to be accepted on the National Register for Historic Places. Customized and factory-built, it is a Sterling Streamliner, a line of 'modernistic' diners manufactured in the late 1930’s and early 1940’s."

The diner "is one of the few known surviving Sterling Streamliner diner still in operation," per Wikipedia. "Its profile resembles that of a 1934 silver locomotive that once pulled the streamlined Burlington Zephyr train."

I believe the diner traded hands last year or this year, after the Demou family had owned it for nearly three decades. The diner's original location was 13 Dexter Street in Pawtucket, not far from the 125 Lofts complex I mentioned in the first post about this Rhode Island city.

While standing across the street from the diner, admiring it in all its glory, I looked down at the sidewalk and got excited. I'm sure anyone eating hash and eggs in the diner who happened to look out my way would've thought to themselves, "What the hell is that nut taking a picture of?"

Well, Mr. or Mrs. Diner Eater, here's what:

I've stumbled across other medallions like this one, in Newton and Winthrop, Massachusetts, that I can recall. The Works Progress Administration (WPA) was a New Deal agency that operated in the 1930s and 1940s, employing millions of job seekers (mostly men) to carry out public works projects, such as the construction of public buildings and roads. The WPA installed and repaired sidewalks in cities across America, including Pawtucket. I love that nearly 90 years later, this badge still looks great.

At this point, I started heading north, back toward downtown and my car. A short distance from the Modern Diner, I liked the look of High Motor Bar & Grille, especially the old stadium seats out front.

The place is evidently fairly new, as Google Street View from 2022 shows this place as Craft Burgers & Beer. In 2007, it was the East Avenue Cafe; in 2011, Doherty's East Avenue Irish Pub. The pub space fills the ground floor, while apartments appear to occupy the upper two floors. As for the four seats out front, I believe they came from the demolished McCoy Stadium, where the Pawtucket Red Sox played.

Continuing north on East Avenue, I dug the clean lines of Downeast Coffee Roasters.

Founded in 1953, the company is run by second and third generation family members.

Near the end of East Avenue I was charmed by an adorable brick commercial building.

The building dates to around 1920, from what I've learned online. For many years, this quaint space was home to Ferdie's Key Shop. If you zoom in on the photo, you may be able to see "EST. 1932" above the door. I think that was the date the key shop opened. Ferdie's closed in 2015; at the end of that year, Bob Parmentier, owner of AA Locksmith in neighboring Central Falls purchased his former competition, according to this Valley Breeze article.

Parmentier and his son-in-law, Josh Cournoyer, ran both key shop locations at that point. I'm guessing the shop wasn't open for all that long, as by 2022, according to Google Street View, this property was occupied by Petit Bakery. The June 2025 Street View shows a sign up for the bakery. As you can see, there's no sign now. The last Facebook post for the bakery was made on February 15, 2024. So I'm not sure what business is here now, although there was an OPEN sign hanging when I made this photo.

Steps away, at the corner of East Avenue and Grace Street, facing I-95, is the awesomely named Mr. USA 1 Hour Cleaner.

Per the dry cleaner's web site, the business has been owned and operated by the Leonard family since 1947. "You've invested a lot of thought and care into your wardrobe," the web site says. "Shouldn't you choose a reliable dry cleaner you can depend on?"

Yes you should.

I headed north across the highway along George Street and Park Place, scanning for any other cool sites before I got to my car. I intersected with Main Street, hung a left and and a quick right on to North Union Street. I loved the painted facades along the rear of what is known these days as the McDevitt Building.

Originally known as Kinyon's Block, this building in 1888 was "constructed in the Queen Anne style, with a 4-story corner tower," according to Art in Ruins. "[T]he top floor of the tower was removed and the remaining tower walls were clad in concrete in 1923 during an Art Deco-style remodeling, which also introduced opaque colored spandrel glass at the 2nd floor level of the tower (above the comer storefront at #9), a concrete door surround at the Broad Street entrance to the upper floors (#23), and added the name 'McDevitt Building' to the top of the tower and over the Broad Street main entrance."

Check out the photos in that post, as they show how beautiful the building was at the turn of last century.

Early building tenants included the YMCA, Kinyon's Commercial School (run by the building owner's son, Hervey Kinyon) and an upholstering business run by Charles Rittmann, this latter fact according to this history of the State of Rhode Island.

By 1915 the W.H. McDevitt clothing store had moved into the storefront at #25, and as of 1921 the building was re-named McDevitt’s Block, per Art in Ruins. Today, tenants include Legendary Barber Shop and In Your Skin Studio, an "adult pole & dance studio."

I continued northeast on North Union Street, across Summer Street, until I was looking at the rear of the former Feldman Furniture building that I mentioned in the first Pawtucket post.

Finally, I love a mural, as you all know. This one on the facade of the Comprehensive Community Action Program building at the corner of North Union and High streets.

CCAP is one of the largest community action programs in Rhode Island, per its web site. The organization provides family medicine and dental care; behavior health services ad substance abuse counseling; Head Start and child care; family development services; social services, WIC nutrition program; a food bank; and home heating and energy assistance.

I haven't been able to find out who painted that mural.

That's it for Pawtucket! I hope to explore more of the Ocean State in the future.