Deterioration of Hospital Trust building forces city to take action
Parking lot is blocked to public due to danger of falling bricks
WOONSOCKET – Concern over the structural integrity of the Rhode Island Hospital Trust Building has prompted city officials to seal off the parking lot adjacent to the downtown landmark opposite City Hall.
Building Official Brad Ward said he’d been monitoring the condition of the building for some time, but he cordoned off the sidewalk and the parking lot last Friday when he noticed portions of the building’s brick facade appeared to be coming loose. A structural engineer later determined that the problem was most serious near the top of the six-story building, where the bricks show a pronounced buckle.
“The brick veneer on that side of the
building is in danger of collapsing,” said Ward. “It’s an unsafe condition.”
The owner of the building, Duarte Carreiro of Fall River, Mass., was cited for having an unsafe building and appeared in Municipal Court this week to answer the complaint. The court ordered Carreiro to come up with a plan to secure the building and he indicated to the court that he will do so, Ward said.
Built in 1937, the Rhode Island Hospital Trust Bank
has long been regarded as an architectural gem of Main Street – its tallest and most majestic building. The Classical Revival-style structure is listed on the National Register of Historic Places and features a cavernous, rotunda-like arcade on the ground floor, with generous marble accents and beefy Corinthian pillars stretching from the floor to the ceiling. The Main Street facade is polished granite with oversized palladium windows, two stories high.
The onetime epicenter of local banking has been vacant for over a decade, however, and it’s succumbed to the ravages of neglect and vandalism, including broken windows and copious graffiti.
But Ward says the cause of the failing brickwork is the deterioration of the Hospital Trust building’s flat roof. It’s become porous, he said, allowing water to seep between the brick veneer and the wall behind it.
“When it freezes, it just pushes the bricks out,” he said.
City inspectors have been keeping a close eye on the problem for some time. When he looked at the building last Friday, Ward said, he noticed “the bricks had really had a large movement and that’s when I shut the parking lot down.”
Ward said the city hired Yoder & Tidwell Architects and Engineers to inspect the building after he noticed the damage. Riding in a boom bucket, one of the Provi-
dence company’s structural engineers got a closer look at the facade and determined that the bricks near the sixth floor were in even more perilous shape than the ones he, Ward, could see from street level.
Ward said there is a secondary area of concern that the owner must address, which is the deterioration of a concrete-and-brick retaining wall that girds a portion of the foundation, closer to the ground. Some of those bricks are flaking away in big chunks onto the parking lot.
Despite the falling masonry debris, so far no damage to a motor vehicle or personal injury has been reported, said Public Works Director Steve D’Agostino. He said the city hired Cosco Fence to erect a temporary chain-link barrier to prevent cars from entering the lot, which has about 40 parking spaces.
“It’s preventative,” said D’Agostino. “We are trying to avoid a situation.”
While the vintage edifice is falling into obvious blight, Carreiro has been trying to sell it and city officials have been doing everything they can to help, said Planning Director Joel D. Mathews.
But Mathews wonders whether the building can be saved from the wrecker’s ball.
“I probably would have said ‘yes’ a few years ago,” he said. “Unfortunately, I don’t think there is any hope for that building. Just to get the building safe would probably cost four or five million dollars. It’s unfortunate, because it’s such a lovely building, in a prominent location on Main Street.”
Mathews said he’s shown the building to prospective buyers on multiple occasions in the last year or so. The building makes a great first impression, said Mathews, but it wears off once shoppers get a chance to kick the tires.
“I’ve showed it to at least six or seven different parties who were quite enthusiastic about it but once they saw the condition and worked out the numbers they didn’t want to proceed,” said Mathews. “It’s in tough shape. Heck, there’s trees growing out of the windows.”
Carreiro had the building on the market as recently as 2017, asking $490,000 for it. Garrett Mancieri, president of the Downtown Woonsocket Collaborative, a Main Street boosters groups, and a salesperson for Gateway Realty, said the building is available for purchase but it is not listed with any agent.
“The owner is trying to sell it himself,” he said.
Mancieri, who was once the listing agent, said the Hospital Trust building has been vacant since the Registry of Motor Vehicles moved out in 2007.
But Mancieri thinks it’s too soon for the city to give up the old downtown’s most iconic building. Anticipating the building will be on the next tax sale list, Mancieri says the city should buy it and take over the chore of finding a buyer interested in rehabilitating the structure.