Humanities getting new home at PC

COURTESY PROVIDENCE COLLEGENEXT PHASE: A rendering of Providence College's Ruane Center for the Humanities. Construction on the project began June 7.
COURTESY PROVIDENCE COLLEGE NEXT PHASE: A rendering of Providence College's Ruane Center for the Humanities. Construction on the project began June 7.

Building a new home for the humanities on campus was always going to be a significant moment in the 95-year history of Providence College.
As it turned out, construction of the new 63,000-square-foot Ruane Center for the Humanities is also one of the largest and most significant building projects in the state during the slumbering local 2012 construction season.
The project, which Dimeo Construction Co. Inc. broke ground on last month, is expected to employ approximately 200 people in the building trades between now and its scheduled completion before the start of fall classes in 2013.
“From our perspective, we had Ocean House, FM Global, Blue Cross & Blue Shield, CVS and Brown [University] in the last four years and then it really hasn’t come back,” said Dimeo President Bradford Dimeo, about demand for new buildings. “We are fortunate in that we are working in and around Boston, Cambridge and New Haven right now. But we are thrilled to be working with PC on a building of this importance.”
Dimeo added that right now medical and educational institutions are producing some of the only new buildings in many areas.
When finished, the Ruane Center will house the departments of English and history, the School of Arts and Sciences and make up the primary teaching space for the Development of Western Civilization classes in the school’s core curriculum.
For years Western Civilization classes have been spread out between different buildings on the campus and the Ruane Center will bring them together and add teaching space so classes can be broken down into smaller sections for more individual attention.
Every Providence College student takes Western Civilization classes four days per week during their freshman and sophomore years, so the building will quickly become familiar to all students once it opens. Located on the southwest side of Providence College’s Elmhurst campus, the Ruane Center will be connected to the 1960s Phillips Memorial Library by a glass walkway.
Across the lawn from the site of the new building is Harkins Hall, the institution’s most identifiable, original 1919 structure.
The location created some design challenges. First was creating a new building that would fit in with the collegiate Gothic of Harkins Hall. But the structure also needed modern amenities. And the design had to represent a transition between Harkins Hall and the Brutalist architecture of Phillips library.
“The location of the building itself is one of the most prominent sites on campus and Harkins Hall is the most prominent building on the campus,” said Rick Polvino, principal in charge for S|L|A|M architects of Boston, which designed the Ruane Center. “So the desire of the school for the new building is to continue the vernacular relationship with Harkins Hall and make the envelope of the building neo-Gothic.”
The glass walkway is designed to be relatively unobtrusive and provide a “light touch” transition between the neo-Gothic and Brutalist structures.
When finished, the Ruane Center will have 12 “seminar-style” classrooms and four larger lecture halls. The site is on a slope, so the front facade will be two stories while the back is three stories.
Toward the front of the building the design has a great room and common areas. As you move to the back there will be classrooms, smaller study rooms and offices.
In the evening hours after classes are done for the day, the large open spaces of the front great room will be used to host college events and functions. Unlike Harkins Hall or most other old masonry collegiate buildings, the new steel-framed Ruane Center, which has a masonry exterior, will be put together in a way so that the rooms can be rearranged in the future if necessary.
“Each room is state of the art and each space has a lot of daylight,” Polvino said. “In the future, the way this is designed, if they wanted to modify the spaces they could do so. In the old buildings you can’t just knock walls down. Today you can. This can accommodate the future.”
At an estimated cost of about $19 million, the Ruane Center is viewed by Providence College officials as a building that will last 100 years and take the school into its second century.
“We think this will be as significant for the next 100 years of Providence College as Harkins Hall was for 1917,” said Mark Rapoza, assistant vice president for facilities management at Providence College. “Students coming in to college now are learning different from the way they did when I was in school. This building is wired to be state of the art.”
The building is being named after Michael Ruane, a member of the Providence College class of 1971 and the current chairman of the board of trustees, who provided the lead donation for the facility.
For Dimeo, the Ruane Center continues a long history of construction at Providence College which includes the library the new humanities building will be attached to.
“It is kind of neat to be touching a building we did 50 years ago,” Dimeo said.
From the construction side, Dimeo said the biggest challenge now is completing the project before the start of classes in 2013.
“The pedal is down trying to build it next summer for fall classes,” Dimeo said. •

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