Fox Point: A Neighborhood and a Community

Fox Point is a neighborhood in Providence, Rhode Island located east of

downtown and bordered by the Providence and Seekonk Rivers and the
College Hill neighborhood. It is one of the city's oldest neighborhoods
and was originally settled by Irish immigrants, who found jobs working
on the Blackstone Canal and the Boston and Providence Railroad.
Later, they labored on the waterfront or in factories and mills. These
new immigrants quickly formed a tightly knit community in Fox Point,
and in the 1840s the area was known as "Corky Hill." Many of the Irish
in Fox Point were members of St. Joseph's Roman Catholic Church,
located on Hope Street, which opened in 1853 and is still an active
parish today. By 1865, Irish immigrants made up fifty percent of the
Fox Point population.

Around this same time, Portuguese whalers from the Azores began
immigrating to the United States. The majority of those who came to
the Northeast went to Nantucket and New Bedford, but some made
their way to Providence. However, it was not until the 1870s that
Portuguese immigrants started to arrive in substantial numbers.
According to state census records, by 1885, there were 818 Portuguese
immigrants living in Providence. Just like the Irish before them, they
settled along Providence's waterfront and found work on the docks. At
the same time the Portuguese were moving into Fox Point, many of the
Irish were moving out. Recognizing that this burgeoning community
needed their own place of worship, the Catholic diocese built the first
Portuguese Catholic church in Rhode Island, called Our Lady of the
Rosary. The church opened on Wickenden Street in 1886.

Immigrants from Cape Verde, a group of islands off the coast of Africa
that was a Portuguese colony from the fifteenth century until it gained
its independence in 1975, also found a new home in Fox Point during
the late 19th century. Like the Portuguese, in the beginning many Cape
Verdeans came as workers on whaling ships, and in Fox Point many
labored on the docks or in factories. Largely because of the color of
their skin, Cape Verdean immigrants faced discrimination that other
Portuguese-speaking immigrants did not. Some were members or Our
Lady of the Rosary Church, but others formed the first Cape Verdean
Church in America, Sheldon St. Church, which opened in Fox Point in
1904.

In the 20th century, the neighborhood underwent drastic physical

changes that caused many members of the Portuguese and Cape
Verdean communities to leave. A hurricane in 1938 did substantial
damage to homes and businesses. The construction of I-195 in the
1950s displaced hundreds of families whose homes were in the path of
the highway. Urban renewal efforts initiated by the city and the
Providence Preservation Society in the 1960s substantially increased
rents in the area, and forced many long-time residents to find more
affordable housing elsewhere. In the 1970s, students from Brown
University, Rhode Island School of Design, and Johnson & Wales
University begin moving into the area, further inflating rents. Fox Point
is poised to change yet again with the relocation of I-195, which will
free up thirty-five acres of land along the waterfront and will reconnect
the neighborhood to Providence's downtown area.

- Prepared by Annie Johnson, Public Humanities M.A.'08

Current Ph.D. Candidate in History, University of Southern
California