Oak Hill Sidewalk Improvements – Pawtucket RI

Founded as a town in 1671, Pawtucket, Rhode Island was home to the nation’s first cotton-spinning machine at Slater Mill and is called the birthplace of the Industrial Revolution in America.

The Oak Hill neighborhood, which borders Providence and the Seekonk River, is the small city’s most affluent residential community. WPA plaques lay embedded in several stretches of these notably rough and pebbled sidewalks at 100-foot intervals, including along the two-block-long Progress Street at the heart of the neighborhood. (It is tempting to connect the naming of Progress Street to WPA activities in and around Oak Hill between 1935 and 1939, but a map from 1914 includes the fortuitously named street).

The plaques pictured here are located at 591 Pleasant Street;  Riverside Cemetery is visible in the background.

Editor’s note: Plaque dates are the generic span of the WPA, not the sidewalks themselves.