Lou has been working as a street cleaner on Westminster Street for about four years, pushing a distinctive yellow cart.

“I do this in the mornings, and then at night I’m a drug and alcohol counsellor. I’ve been working there for about twenty years. It keeps me going.”

He works at a halfway house on the West Side, where young men with addictive dependencies go to try and rebuild their lives. Some are sent there by the courts, others end up there through interventions by family or friends.

“In the house is 22 guys, so you have 22 personalities, that’s what you got to deal with.

“You have to, not judge, but figure out what kinds of problems they have. You come to me, and we’ll talk about what you’re going through and what you can’t kick. I have to sit and let you talk, and then I can pinpoint what’s what. I’m not saying I’m Mr Perfect because no-one is, but if you were to sit down with me, I could point some things out.

“Myself, you, me, we have to be leaders. If we’re not leaders, they got no-one to look up to. Let’s reach out and help somebody, get somebody’s hand, tell someone you love them.

“I’ve been clean for twenty years now, I love helping people, reaching out to them.

“Some fall and don’t make it back. That’s the sad part.”

Juliette’s first language was French, and now she’s bilingual. She’s four years old, and goes to the Dr. Pat Feinstein Child Development Center on Westminster Street. Her parents found the school through friends who already sent their kids there.

Juliette likes “to play house, to play on the trampoline” and her favorite color is purple. She also loves to dance – ”I just started lessons.” She has two big brothers, aged 14 and 17. They lend her their iPods.

Thanks to everyone who came to The Museum Of Westminster Street. This is the final week of the window at 191 Westminster Street – but we’ll keep posting more stories on here for the next few weeks. Thanks for stopping by!

The STOP sign originated in Detroit, Michigan, in 1915. The original American STOP sign had black letters on a white background. In 1924, the background changed to yellow, and then in 1954 to the current design of a red octagon. Its legal minimum mounting height in urban areas is seven feet. There has been a stop sign on this corner since 1989.

The stop sign on the corner is attached to a red post that is what remains of an old fire department call box. On top of it was a phone that allowed residents and businesses on this street to alert the Fire Department in an emergency. If you go to the corner of Dorrance and Pine Streets, you can see one with its call box intact. Long in disuse, the post continues to be painted red by the Downtown Improvement District, who retouch the paintwork every spring.

Between 1964 and 1989, this section of Westminster Street was pedestrianized, and known as Westminster Mall. The lead designer in opening it up to traffic again was RISD graduate Kim Ahern, now a landscape architect in Massachusetts. “When we started laying the sidewalk,” she says, “we discovered a lot of disused coal cellars underneath, so we had to waterproof everything before putting down the bricks.”

This trash can was commissioned in 2006. It’s one of a series made by The Steel Yard, a Providence-based community organization that fosters the industrial arts and small business. You can see The Steel Yard logo, a tool known as ‘pincers,’ on the side of the can. A team of artists worked on its creation: Curtis E. Aric, Nate Nadeau, Heidi Born, Monica Shinn, Ally, Tim Ferland, D Tillery, Howie Sneider, Adam Morosky. The yellow stripe around it was painted by the Downtown Improvement District in 2009, to indicate that it, rather than the City of Providence, takes care of emptying this can.

Most of the poles on parking signs in Providence are green in color, but on this street, and in much of downtown, they are black. That’s because the Downtown Improvement District paints all of the street furniture every year, from the lamp posts to the parking meter poles, using Rust-Oleum protective paint in the color “Gloss Black.”

The lamp posts were designed and manufactured by Urban Metal, based in Pennsylvania. The design is called “Providence” with a “National” base. They were installed as part of the reopening of the street to traffic in 1989. They’re unusually tall, to bring attention to the architecture of the buildings, and they were originally painted dark green.

The tall black vent on the street helps to cool the electricity lines that run underneath this street. It is owned and maintained by National Grid, and painted by the Downtown Improvement District. Occasionally, you can see steam rising out of it, and hear a fan whirring as the heat escapes.

The building owners are responsible for the sidewalks in front of their property – which explains the variation in quality and materials as you walk down the street. Check out the sidewalk in front of Tazza, and along the Eddy Street side of Two Brothers Beauty Supply – it’s actually tar, stamped with brick shapes and painted red.

Westminster Street downtown is being transformed for a unique public event. LAST DAY SATURDAY!

The Museum Of Westminster Street will change your perspective on this street, and the people around you. Catch it while you can, and become make an exhibit of yourself.

Friday March 5, 11.30am-2pm
Saturday March 6, 12pm-4pm

Westminster Street, between Dorrance and Union Street

Included in Providence Business News, “Top Ten Things To Do This Weekend”

“Ready for some facts, memories, and stories in real time? The folks behind The Museum of Westminster Street believe that patrons don’t need to have four walls around them to ponder what’s before them.” – Providence Phoenix

UPDATE: We had a great time – here’s a video of the event. Thanks to everyone who came along!

Kamilah works part time at the reference desk of the Johnson and Wales Library. “I like the easy-going pace, I like helping people, and I’m fascinated with books.”

So we asked her to recommend us a book.

“The House at Sugar Beach by Helene Cooper. It’s like a semi-autobiography of a woman who’s from Liberia, it was amazing. It was a new book we had just gotten in the library – at the front desk, we get first dibs on some books, so I was like ‘I’m going to read this before it gets put on the shelves.’”

Kamilah is originally from Richmond, Virginia, and is working at the library part time while she studies business management and computer programming at JWU.

“I plan to go teach English in Japan for a year, before coming a business consultant. I want to do US first and then go international. I took higher college courses at high school, so I’m ahead of my game.”

Shaun shares with us his personal Westminster Story:

“It all started 13 years ago, when I moved to Rhode Island to attend Johnson & Wales University.

“I can remember sitting out on the benches in front of the Grace Church with some friends, and watching all the drag queens and gay folks coming and going from a local gay bar. I was amazed by them, because where I grew up, in a small town in Western Pennsylvania, you didn’t see too many out gay folks, let alone transgender folks or drag queens.

“If you were gay where I grew up, you certainly didn’t acknowledge those feelings. It was eight years before I came out myself as a Female-to-Male Transsexual. I am not ashamed of being born a woman, I don’t hide it from anyone, my past is very much a part of what made me who I am today.

“Westminster Street has also changed quite a bit since those days, when I lived in Bell Hall (now the Hotel Providence). It used to be a dark street that you probably didn’t want to walk up it alone late at night. Now, when I walk up the street, I am amazed by the transformation. I can only hope that Rhode Islanders appreciate what this street has to culturally offer.

“Westminster Street in Providence will always have a special place in my life. It is the place where I was first confronted with my destiny, my journey to truth and self-acceptance to become the man I am today.”

Shaun’s Westminster Story was submitted via this website. Tell us yours.

Most days, you can find David writing poetry at a table in Tim Horton’s, on the other side of Dorrance Street. “I have an international following.” He worked in technology until 2005, when his $98,000 job went overseas. “I lost my home, my job, my marriage. I was homeless for 13 months. But I’m better off now then I was before. When you have to start over again, you appreciate what you have.” He’s been writing poetry for almost 40 years. You can read his poem about this window here

Mr Quasi Moto, who is part avocado, works with the group Big Nazo, whose studio is close by. In the mid 1980s, when this street was still pedestrianized, “I started doing some street performances on the corner of Union and Westminster. We needed a place to come and test the waters. We’d come out for an hour or two, work through material. We weren’t ready for the big time then.”

Daemion works for City Year, a nationwide organization that gives 17- to 24-year-olds the opportunity to engage in 10 months of full-time community service. Its local base is above where Bowl & Board used to be. He coordinates community projects for City Year volunteers. “I graduated from the University of Oregon and wanted to do something different. In his spare time, he likes going to the library and “checking out random books.”

Kristen works at Craftland, where she also sells notebooks that she makes, with covers made from old maps. “I have a textile background, which means I wear scarves most of the time. It’s one of my little addictions. I’m like the Carrie Bradshaw of scarves.”

In the 1870s, Christiana owned a high-class hair salon in a building where the store Oop! is. Though she was African-American at a time when few owned high-profile businesses in the city, her salon business thrived. It went by the name “Madame Carteaux”, Bannister’s first married name. Today she is better remembered as an abolitionist, a fundraiser for “colored regiments” and as the founder of the first Home for Aged Colored Women in the city, today a nursing home called Bannister House.

Danielle works part time in clothing store Clover, and part time as an art-and-design teacher at an elementary school in Cumberland, RI. “We don’t have a dedicated art room, so I’m art-on-a-cart. None of the students can see I have tattoos. I get them done at Federal Hill Tattoo on Atwell’s Avenue. They’re about the things in my life that mould the person I am.”

Juan has been head of security in the AAA building for the last 16 years. “You never know, sometimes we have trouble. But we like things to be quiet.” Before he worked here, “for 25 years, I was supervisor of maintenance at City Hall. Before that, I was in the marines as a boilerman. I traveled halfway around the world, to England, Scotland, the Mediterranean, West Africa.”

Deborah is one of the downtown parking attendants. “For 21 years, I worked in a bank, taking care of people who wanted to open big trust accounts. I used to write checks for millions of dollars.” Seven years ago she switched to a less stressful job that involved being outside – though she does sometimes have to suffer irate motorists. “We’ve gotten grabbed by people. One attendant got hit by a car. We can call for backup, the cops will be here in two minutes.”

Jane is on her way to a Spanish evening class at URI.

“You know that movie, The Bucket List? A guy makes a list of what he wants to do before he dies. I saw it, and I thought ‘I’m going to go home and get those lists that I wrote when I was 20 years old.’ I found some, and number two or three on each one was ‘Learn Spanish’. My youngest kid just went to college, so I thought I’d get something in place before she goes, so I don’t have the severe trauma of that experience.”

Two summers ago, she went to Nicaragua to study Spanish there. “I hadn’t travelled alone like that for a long time. I might go to Guatemala in April for a vacation – I have a cousin who’s a missionary there.”

Originally from Hawaii, she already speaks Japanese from her time living in Japan teaching English. “My husband and I were living in Japan, and he came home one day and said ‘I dont want to teach English, I want to teach Japanese history.’ Japanese people are into superlatives, so he went to the most superlative place possible, which was Harvard. After that, he got a job at URI. That was 11 years ago.”

Part avocado, with a brain the size of a shelled cashew, Mr Quasi Moto is a unique part of Westminster Street folklore. A member of the performance troupe Big Nazo, based nearby on the corner of Fulton and Eddy Streets, right now he is doing his rounds.

“Someone’s got to walk the streets. If you’re a legend, you have to be a living legend.

“I’m just remembering when Westminster was a pedestrian street. It was mid, late 1980s, when I started doing some street performances here with my little pals. We would set up on the corner of Union and Westminster. We needed a place to come and test the waters, work the crowds, get out to where the people were at and test their response to the more bizarre denizens of this fine city.

“In the early days, we’d come out for an hour or two, work through material. People reacted positively, mysteriously, oddly. People didn’t know what was going on, but it made sense.

“Providence was a great incubator to do these kinds of things. It had a great street setting that was very conducive to improvisational hangout street theater.”

Word spread, and soon Mr Moto and his friends were invited to take part in events in New York City, then in Canada and Japan. This February, they will perform daily as part of the Winter Olympics celebrations in Vancouver, BC.

“I try to instill a culture of absurdity for the locals. Don’t get me wrong, there is plenty of absurdity in life already. We just want to manifest it in an abstract, external sensibility.”

Sin works as a bartender at The 201, next to this window, every Thursday night. She specializes in improvized cocktails: give her a name, and she’ll make you a drink to fit it. She’s previously been a stage carpenter at Trinity Rep theater, and toured the world with a children’s show. Next fall, she’ll be starting graduate school, to get a Masters degree in teaching Latin. “Classics has always been a passion of mine. It’s about time I explored it professionally.”

Daniel works for Centrex, a drinks distribution company. About once a week he comes to Westminster Street to deliver to Eno, Tazza, and The 201. “Beer, wine, liquor, water, Red Bull, you name it. I’ve been working for this company for eight years. It’s a job, that’s all that matters.”

Nathan is a manager at Subway on Weybosset Street. He works between 50 and 60 hours a week. Right now, he’s carrying a bottle of vinegar over to the store. He lives with his brother, and they have three cats. “My favorite sub? The Italian.”

On the spot where the window now is once stood the Chin Lee Chinese restaurant, whose menu offered more American dishes than Chinese. It was opened in 1914 by Chinese immigrant Dong Goon Chin. His family lived for a while here above the restaurant. In 1924, the family moved to New York City. That same year, a Chin Lee restaurant opened on Broadway, seating nearly a thousand people.

Some days, Al goes next door to Mama Teresa’s for lunch. “I usually go for the chicken pizza strips.” Then he returns to his desk at AAA, on the other side of this window, where he helps members compile information for upcoming road trips. His own favorite destination? “The Grand Canyon. It’s just beautiful.”

Jacob works in Farmstead, selling cheese, meats, and sandwiches. He also studies music at Rhode Island College. “My favorite band around here is [alternative brass marching band] What Cheer? Brigade. They embody the Providence musical spirit of being inclusive, they’re always in the middle of the crowd. It really makes a difference in how the audience perceives the music. That’s what Providence is, the music is just a part of the city.”

Donna and Marie have lunch every day at Amenities deli, a block further down Westminster Street. “They fax us the specials each morning,” says Donna. “Everything there is delicious,” adds Marie. They’ve both been working at Rhode Island Housing, a few blocks away, for more than a decade. “They really take care of their employees and their customers.”

Sara is studying graphic design at RISD. We met her in November, buying a turkey sandwich at Farmstead. “I’m buying turkey because we didn’t have it for Thanksgiving. My boyfriend is a vegetarian, and we had tofu. It was delicious though.”