Benefit Street – Mile of History

The walking path that became Back Street, then Benefit Street, has been accumulating architecture since Providence's founding lots first ran up College Hill. Today it's recognized as one of the most extensive collections of Colonial and Early Federal buildings in the country — grand civic institutions and private residences standing together in the College Hill neighborhood, still in use, still inhabited. The Providence Preservation Society stepped in when urban renewal threatened to erase it. That intervention is why it still exists.