Do you keep driving by a seemingly unloved, ramshackle building thinking, someone should do something with that? Then the Providence Preservation Society wants to hear from you. They may not have that particular gem on their radar, so go here to make a nomination on the PPS 2020 Most Endangered Properties form. Nominations are due by Friday, October 11.
Providence Preservation Society’s MEP list draws attention to properties large and small that are suffering from blight, neglect, or threat of demolition. We need your help identifying buildings and places across the Providence landscape that are under threat. Are you concerned about the future of a local building? This is your chance to let us know.
Seen here is the St. Teresa of Avila Church on Manton Avenue from the PPS 2019 Most Endangered Properties List.
Designed by William Walker & Sons and dedicated in 1885, St. Teresa of Avila Church was built during an era when newly arrived ethnic groups were adding to the Roman Catholic population of Providence. Originally, the church was built in the Gothic Revival style, identifiable by pointed-arch windows, to serve the predominantly Irish congregation.
Today St. Teresa’s red brick façade from the 1930s expresses classical details and a large rose window above the Manton Street entrance. Built to serve a growing population in one of the most highly industrialized parts of the city, which included an increasing Spanish population as late as the 1980s, sadly the church closed its doors in 2009 due to a declining congregation.
This former church was also featured on the 2014 and 2015 lists.
Young Teresa was plagued with voices and visitations, occasionally levitating off her cot. Various parts of Saint Teresa’s body — an arm in Lisbon, a breast in Rome, and her heart wears a little crown in the convent in Ávila — are still venerated relics. But Teresa is perhaps most famous for her autobiography published in 1565 in which she recounts her visitation one night by an “angel” with a “spear.”
I saw in his hand a long spear of gold, and at the iron’s point there seemed to be a little fire. He appeared to me to be thrusting it at times into my heart, and to pierce my very entrails; when he drew it out, he seemed to draw them out also, and to leave me all on fire with a great love of God. The pain was so great, that it made me moan; and yet so surpassing was the sweetness of this excessive pain, that I could not wish to be rid of it. The soul is satisfied now with nothing less than God. The pain is not bodily, but spiritual; though the body has its share in it. It is a caressing of love so sweet which now takes place between the soul and God, that I pray God of His goodness to make him experience it who may think that I am lying.
Noted 17th-century sculptor Gian Lorenzo Bernini clearly drew on this description when fashioning The Ecstasy of Saint Teresa.