The List Art Building was completed in 1971, six years after the building project was launched by a donation by Mr. and Mrs. Albert List, private collectors and art patrons. Other major gifts came from Mrs. John D. Rockefeller, the Ford Foundation, and the estate of Edith Knight. Built on College Hill in back of the John Hay Library, the five story concrete building with distinctive rooftop skylights and cantilevered sunscreens is highly visible in all directions. On the first floor are a large lecture room for 225 people and the David Winton Bell Gallery, a 2500 square foot exhibition area, the gift of Mr. and Mrs. Charles H. Bell and Lucy Bell Hartwell in memory of their son and brother. On the top floor is a 4500 square foot painting studio with skylights. The architect was Philip Johnson of New York and the associate architect was Samuel Glaser and Partners of Boston. The building, named the Albert and Vera List Art Building, was dedicated on October 8, 1971 at exercises at which art historian Kenneth Clark delivered an address.
Bibliography:
Martha Mitchell, Encyclopedia Brunoniana, copyright ©1993 by the Brown University Library
–Providence’s Recent Past (2010), a PPS map by Ned Connors.
After almost a decade of mediocre architecture, the university, encouraged by ambitious-architectural-patron and Brown Corporation-member John Nicholas Brown (1900-1979), embarked on a course to build better buildings. The school thus obtained the services of Philip Johnson for his eye-catching art center. Johnson was then beginning a formalist phase, first seen in his addition to the Boston Public Library (1964-71) and culminating in the Chippendaleseque AT&T Building on Madison Avenue a decade later. Distinguished by its colossal “colonnade” and sawtooth roofline, the building is better as an object than as either a neighbor in an historic neighborhood or as a functional classroom, gallery, and studio space. Budget problems obviated the planned stone sheathing, so the poured concrete walls with shallow holes to attach the stone had to suffice. Because the first floor is occupied by large art-lecture halls and a gallery, both windowless by necessity, the building presents blank walls on all sides, save for its large-window lobby at mid-block. The second story, with administrative offices, classrooms, and an informal gallery opens onto a terrace with a spectacular view to the west. (Johnson paid no heed to building codes, so railing had to be tacked atop its parapet for safe occupancy.) The oriel windows that should provide each of the fourth-story offices with similarly splendid views to the west are impossible to access for cleaning, so occupants are usually rewarded with only grimy vistas. Ultimately this structure’s quirky monumentality has an oddly appealing charm, especially at a distance as an element of College Hill skyline.
– 2003 Guide to Providence Architecture
Last edited March 26, 2025 by Elisabeth Brown
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