Washington Park

Washington Park is a residential neighborhood at the southern end of Providence, bounded north by Interstate 95 and continuing south to the Cranston city line. The neighborhood's residential streets branch off two principal corridors — Broad Street to the west and Narragansett Boulevard to the east — with Roger Williams Park forming the neighborhood's western edge. WalkScore counts roughly 8,666 residents and rates the area 65/100 for walkability, and U.S. Census tracts covering the neighborhood (Tracts 35 and 37) report a combined population of about 8,900.

The neighborhood's name traces to a horse-racing track operated by Edward Babcock and his son William in the mid-1800s on farmland between the harbor and Broad Street; the track survived until at least 1884. The Washington Park fire station at 773 Allens Avenue remains one of the neighborhood's recognizable civic buildings.

The dominant open-space asset is Roger Williams Park, the ~430-acre public park immediately to the west, which contains the Roger Williams Park Zoo (one of the oldest zoos in the United States), the Botanical Center, and the Museum of Natural History and Planetarium — the museum opened in 1895. Within the neighborhood proper, the City of Providence operates the Davey Lopes Recreation Center on Dudley Street. For transit, RIPTA's Route 20 runs the Elmwood Avenue corridor on the neighborhood's western flank between downtown Providence and T.F. Green Airport, and Route 3 connects downtown Providence to Warwick through the south Providence corridor.