This 1838 Theater only lasted 6 years before it was converted into a warehouse

Shakespeare Hall - Sprague-Knight Building, Providence Rhode Island

Date added: December 05, 2023 Categories: Rhode Island Theater Industrial

The Sprague-Knight Building, constructed in 1838 as "Shakspeare Hall" and converted to use as a textile manufactory by the 1860s, played a significant role in Providence's theatrical and industrial history.

The early history of drama in Providence was erratic. Theatrical productions were common as early as the mid-eighteenth century, but no permanent theatre was built. By the late 1830s, Providence had been without any theatre for quite some time, although the need of one was seriously felt. Accordingly, a number of public-spirited gentlemen decided to erect...one that should be a credit to the city for its appearance and capacity.

Shakspeare Hall opened to an enthusiastic house on 29^th October 1838 with performances of "The Soldier's Daughter" and "A Pleasant Neighbor" preceded by "an elegant prologue" written by Providence's premier poetess, Sarah Helen Whitman. Its success, in spite of performances by nationally known actors, was short-lived, however by the mid-1840s, the theatre's novelty had worn off, and growing objections from the nearby Second Baptist Church precipitated the theatre's closing in 1844.

The same year, Dr. Dionysus Lardner converted the building into a planetarium and conducted lectures on astronomy. His activities were cut short in October of 1844 when an extensive fire virtually destroyed the building leaving only its exterior walls standing.

By the 1850s, the neighborhood land use began to change. Shipping activity had become firmly established on the west side of the Providence River, with wharves and warehouses at the end of Dorrance and Custom House; then Long Wharf; Streets. Providence's industrialization also prompted the construction of industrial buildings in this area southeast of Pine Street. The area became less well suited to theatres and auditoriums, which began to rise in the commercial center of Providence, around Westminster Street and Exchange Place. The gutted theatre building, no longer attractive as theatre space, was easily adaptable to commercial/industrial use, by virtue of its sound exterior walls and open interior space.

The building had been recycled for wholesale merchandising by the mid-1850s, but industrial activity soon followed: the seller included "all belting, shafting, and gearing in the building" in the sales agreement with the A & W Sprague Manufacturing Company in 1863.

Sprague Manufacturing Company, the preeminent textile manufacturer in mid-nineteenth-century Rhode Island, purchased the building probably as a warehouse for some phase of its cotton production. The Spragues were early practitioners of vertical integration, then uncommon in the textile industry, and their success depended on maintaining a large stock of materials. The company declared bankruptcy in the panic of 1873. Like other properties owned by the company, the warehouse was involved in litigation during the 1870s and 1880s. It was finally sold to B.B.R. Knight Manufacturing Company in 1890 for use as a cotton-goods warehouse.

Ballou, Johnston, and Nichols, hard goods wholesalers, purchased the building from the Knights in 1922, having leased the building since 1903. The firm continued to use the building primarily as warehouse space, before selling it in 1977.

Current plans call for the rehabilitation of the building as office space. This change in use will continue the building's traditional response to changing land-use patterns in the area, for the State of Rhode Island has recently selected an adjacent vacant site for the construction of a state court building.

Building Description

Built in 1838, the Sprague-Knight Building is a six-story masonry structure whose form has evolved with changing use of the building from a theatre to a light-industrial and warehouse building.

The original theatre building, designed in the Greek Revival style by the prominent Providence architect James Bucklin, was a three-and-a-half-story stone edifice, approximately sixty feet wide and one hundred feet deep, fronting on Dorrance Street. The exterior was stuccoed and pointed in imitation of granite. Large pilasters above a one-story granite basement defined the five-bay facade; these elements remain. The original interior, including an elaborate decorative scheme based on the signs of the Zodiac, was destroyed in 1844 by a fire which left only the exterior walls standing.

Following this conflagration, the structure was rebuilt and probably assumed much of its present form: the exterior walls were raised to six stories, the interior industrial space was established, and the loading bays on each floor on the facade were opened.

Sometime late in the nineteenth century the brick, five-story section at the rear became part of the building. Structural evidence suggests that this portion was a four-and-a-half-story, gable-roof building independent of the theatre building before the two were integrated into one. The last stage in the building's evolution was the raising of this section to five full stories and the construction of its shed roof.

The interior is an open space, broken only by supporting cast-iron columns and a brick bearing wall that traverses the building's width at approximately its midpoint.