Blackstone

Blackstone occupies the northeast corner of Providence's East Side, between the eastern ridge of the Moshassuck River Valley and the western bank of the Seekonk River, bounded south and west by Lloyd Avenue and Hope Street. It is one of six East Side neighborhoods and is primarily made up of single-family dwellings. The area was largely marshland and farmland into the 19th century; large-scale residential development followed the 1894 opening of Blackstone Boulevard, planned by landscape architect Horace Cleveland of Chicago as an improved approach to Swan Point Cemetery.

The boulevard itself functions as the neighborhood's spine and signature open space. Its 19.3-acre central park between northbound and southbound lanes carries a 1.7-mile jogging and walking path. The adjacent Blackstone Boulevard Realty Plat Historic District, a roughly 40-acre area listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1995, contains over 100 architect-designed Neo-Georgian, Tudor, Mediterranean, and Norman / French Provincial houses on lots two to three times the typical Providence size of the period, built largely in the late 1920s and early 1930s. Along the Seekonk, the 45-acre Blackstone Park Conservation District is actively managed by the Blackstone Parks Conservancy and the Providence Parks Department as a Northeastern coastal forest preserve, with oak, beech, and birch woodland, intertidal habitat, and the 1891 Narragansett Boat Club boathouse on its riverbank.

Institutional anchors include Butler Hospital (founded 1844, Rhode Island's only private psychiatric hospital) off Blackstone Boulevard, Swan Point Cemetery at the boulevard's north end, and houses of worship including Temple Emanu-El and St. Sebastian's Roman Catholic Church. The neighborhood is served by Providence Public School District schools — Vartan Gregorian Elementary, Nathan Bishop Middle, and Hope High School — and is in close proximity to independent schools including Lincoln School on Butler Avenue and Moses Brown School. Downtown Providence is roughly two miles to the southwest, accessible by RIPTA Route 1 along Hope Street into Kennedy Plaza.