Elmhurst

Elmhurst is a neighborhood in northwest Providence bordered by Douglas Avenue and Admiral Street to the northeast, Academy Avenue and Smith Street to the west, and Chalkstone Avenue to the south. The area shifted from 18th- and 19th-century farmland to a streetcar-connected residential district after 1882, with Irish and Italian immigrant families settling in the early 1900s.

The defining institution is Providence College, established in 1917 by the Dominican Friars and located on the high ground atop Smith Hill within Elmhurst, with main gates at Cunningham Square where River Avenue meets Eaton Street. La Salle Academy followed to the neighborhood in 1925, and Roger Williams Medical Center — the former Homeopathic Hospital — operates here as a 220-bed teaching hospital affiliated with the Boston University School of Medicine.

Day-to-day, Elmhurst combines early-20th-century housing stock with green space such as Pleasant Valley Parkway, the 1909 landscaped boulevard modeled on the design language of Blackstone Boulevard. The neighborhood is roughly two miles from downtown Providence and is connected by RIPTA Route 55, the Admiral / Providence College line that terminates at Kennedy Plaza.