Valley

Valley is a compact neighborhood in northwestern Providence, set along the Woonasquatucket River between Olneyville to the southwest and Smith Hill to the east, and bounded by Chalkstone, Raymond, Harris / Atwells, and Academy Avenue. Valley Street splits the neighborhood: triple-deckers and family homes north of the street, and a band of former factory and mill buildings — Providence Iron and Steel, Monohasset Mill, U.S. Rubber, American Locomotive — running south along the river.

Many of those mills now host artist studios, offices, and event spaces. The Providence Steel and Iron Company complex on Sims Avenue was sold in 2003 and reopened as The Steel Yard, an industrial-arts non-profit that runs public events such as the annual Iron Pour and won the Rudy Bruner Award silver medal in 2013. The Valley Arts District corridor along the river hosts the FringePVD festival, and in 2020 the first Providence distillery since Prohibition opened in the neighborhood. WaterFire Providence — the non-profit behind the city's signature riverfront art event — is also based in the neighborhood at the WaterFire Arts Center on Valley Street.

Day-to-day, Valley is highly walkable (Walk Score 86) and reasonably bikeable, with the Woonasquatucket River Bike Path running through the neighborhood toward downtown and Waterplace Park. RIPTA Routes 27 and 28 run along Broadway / Manton and Broadway / Hartford on the southern edge, and Olneyville Square — a major transit junction at Westminster, Broadway, Hartford, Plainfield, and Manton — sits just outside Valley's southwest corner. Public open space includes John Donigian Memorial Park on Valley Street and, just over the Olneyville line, Riverside Park, all linked by the Woonasquatucket Greenway.