After holding the property unused for more than a decade, Brown University has sold the former Old Stone Bank building, a Providence landmark with a large Corinthian portico, four granite Ionic columns and an ornate copper-and-gold leaf dome.
Gold Dome Properties LLC closed on the South Main Street building in a $2.14 million deal, according to a deed filed with the city in October 2008. The deed gives Brown the right of first refusal if the building is put up for sale again.
It is unclear what the building’s new owner will do with the long-disused former bank branch. In filings with the city, NABsys Inc. President and CEO Barrett Bready is listed as Gold Dome’s principal. In a brief phone interview last week, Bready declined to comment on the sale or the future of the building. A Brown spokesman didn’t immediately return calls seeking comment.
When Brown bought the 27,780-square-foot neoclassical-style building in 1995, it saw it as one of the first steps toward an increased downtown presence in Providence. As part of the university’s expansion, it later purchased the Old Stone Square building, just across South Main Street, for $31.5 million. Then-President Vartan Gregorian said in a statement that owning the Old Stone Bank building, which was set to house the school’s Haffenreffer Museum of Anthropology, would “involve the university more deeply in the cultural and economic life of downtown Providence.”
The university paid $1.15 million for both the Old Stone Bank building and the Benoni Cook House, a 181-year-old building that’s connected to it by an archway, and planned a renovation that would cost more than $10 million. The renovation would have created 11 galleries, including a second-floor space that would have brought “visitors close to the interior of the dome.”
The plan also included public education space and a bookstore. The central rotunda, formerly where Old Stone bank tellers had sat behind a curved counter, would have been left open for lectures and gatherings.
R.I. Historical Preservation & Heritage Commission Executive Director Edward F. Sanderson said that space is impressive. The lobby is detailed in brass and marble and surrounded by wood-paneled offices, according to a RIHPHC citywide architecture survey.
But by 1999, the university said in a statement the building’s redesign would be too costly, because it “would have required extensive renovation of the historic structure as well as significant new construction, including a multistory addition.”
Sanderson, who had reviewed Brown’s plans for the renovation and a 7,500-square-foot addition in the 1990s, said the planned addition wasn’t well received by neighbors.
“Some of their neighbors decided they weren’t interested in having a museum there,” he said. “It became a private discussion between Brown and some neighbors. Brown was going to build an addition on the back of the lot and I think there was some question of city views being affected.”
The location had originally housed a smaller Old Stone Bank building, built in 1854. Old Stone Bank, then known as the Providence Institute for Savings, built a one-story granite building on the site and in 1898, when the current building was built, that one-story building was incorporated into the design. The new building was designed by the architectural firm Stone, Carpenter and Wilson, which also designed Union State and the Providence Public Library’s Empire Street headquarters. The northwest corner of the building – which includes the left side of the front façade – is part of the original building, Sanderson said.
“If it’s not actually from that building, it’s an exact duplicate from that building,” he said. “But it’s hard to know exactly what they did when they reconstructed it in 1898.”
Brown bought the building from the Resolution Trust Corporation, which was a federal receivership organization, after Old Stone Bank’s deposits were purchased by Citizens Financial Group Inc. in 1994. The Corporation of Brown University, a board of trustees and fellows, in May 2008 approved going forward with a sale. •
