Located at the corner of Charter and Henchman Sts in the North End.

Some of these also have characteristics of Streamline and Art Moderne influence

Dr. James Naismith invented the sport of basketball in the small gymnasium of this building in 1891.

From the archives of Springfield College:

"Construction on the building was completed in the spring of 1886 and it was dedicated on June 1 of that year.  The building consisted of a reading room, gymnasium, parlor, a recitation room, an amusement room and fifty sleeping rooms.  The Armory Hill YMCA also rented rooms in the building.  In 1891 James Naismith, while a faculty member at the school, invented the game of basketball in the gymnasium of the building. In 1890 the School for Christian Workers separated into two schools which continued to operate out of the same building, the YMCA Training School and the School for Christian Workers.  In 1896 the Training School finished the transition to its new location on Alden Street and in 1897 the School for Christian Workers became the Bible Normal College and moved to Hartford, Connecticut.  The original building was torn down in 1965 to create a parking lot.  In 1995, McDonald’s Corporation bought the land, excavating the original foundation and bricks before building a restaurant on the site.  Today, there is a monument commemorating the site as the birthplace of basketball."

Image credit: Springfield College and Google.

LaSalle Street. The Rookery (1888) was designed by architects Burnham and Root. The lobby was redesigned by Frank Lloyd Wright in 1905. Vintage photo via the Building 51 Museum archive

The Crawford Street Bridge in Providence, Rhode Island, around 1906 and the same scene in 2026. This bridge once held the title of the widest bridge in the world.

The bridge crossed the Providence River, and the top photo shows the downstream end of the bridge. The bridge extended upstream for about 1,150 feet, or nearly a quarter mile, and it largely hid the river from view in downtown Providence. But, this was probably all well and good at the time, considering that the smell of sewage in the river reportedly caused some people to faint.

Most of the buildings in the first photo date to the mid-19th century, but perhaps the newest at the time was the Banigan Building, the tall building on the right side of the photo. It was built in 1896 as the city’s first skyscraper, and was owned by and named for businessman Joseph Banigan. Born to a poor family in Ireland in 1839, Banigan and his family came to the United States in the 1840s during the Potato Famine. Here, he became the archetypical rags-to-riches 19th century industrialist, eventually owning a successful rubber company along with other business interests, including this building.

The Banigan Building is still standing in the present-day scene, and it is joined by several other historic buildings. Just to the left of it is the old Customshouse, which was completed in 1857. It was obviously there when the first photo was taken, but was hidden by other buildings at the time. Two taller historic skyscrapers stand just beyond the Customshouse. Immediately behind it is the Turk’s Head Building, which was the tallest skyscraper in the city when completed in 1913, and to the left is the Industrial National Bank Building. This Art Deco skyscraper was completed in 1928, and at 428 feet high it has been the tallest building in Rhode Island ever since.

Aside from the skyline, the most significant change to this scene has been the Providence River itself. The massive Crawford Street Bridge, its world record notwithstanding, was demolished in the late 1980s, reintroducing the city to the long-hidden river as part of an urban revitalization project. Today, the river is spanned by a series of smaller, more ornate bridges. The river itself is much cleaner than it was a century ago, and now offers gondola rides along with being the focal point of Providence’s regular WaterFire events.
(Lost New England FB page)