Biohazard Cleanup Near Fox Point Providence, RI

Providence is the capital and most populous city of Rhode Island, with 190,934 residents at the 2020 census, making it the third-most populous city in New England and the county seat of Providence County.

Providence was founded in 1636 by Roger Williams, a religious exile from the Massachusetts Bay Colony, who named the settlement in honor of God's merciful Providence and settled it at the confluence of the Moshassuck and Woonasquatucket Rivers at the head of Narragansett Bay.

In 1652 Providence prohibited indentured servitude for periods longer than ten years, the first anti-slavery law in the United States, though there is no evidence the prohibition was ever enforced, and the settlement was burned to the ground by the Narragansetts in March 1676 during King Philip's War.

In 1772 a group from Providence burned a British customs schooner in the Gaspee Affair, the first act of armed resistance to British rule in North America, more than a year before the Boston Tea Party, and Rhode Island was the first colony to renounce allegiance to the British Crown on May 4, 1776 and the last state to ratify the United States Constitution on May 29, 1790.

Brown University moved to Providence from Warren in 1770, when it was still known as Rhode Island College, and the First Baptist Church in America, founded by Roger Williams in 1638, has its present meetinghouse on College Hill, first occupied in 1775.

Providence residents ratified a city charter in 1831 and the city was incorporated on November 5, 1832, and it became one of the first cities in the country to industrialize, noted for textiles, machine tools, jewelry and silverware, with firms such as Brown and Sharpe and the Gorham Manufacturing Company.

Providence's population peaked at 253,504 in 1940 and declined to 179,213 by 1970 as residents moved to the suburbs, and the 2020 census counted 190,934 people in 69,597 households, with a median age of 30.9 years.

Providence is racially and ethnically diverse, with 43.9 percent of residents Hispanic or Latino in 2020, the largest ancestry group Dominican at 18.2 percent, and Federal Hill serves as the city's Little Italy while Fox Point is its Portuguese neighborhood.

Providence is home to eight hospitals and eight institutions of higher learning, including Brown University and the Rhode Island School of Design, and Fortune 500 company Textron and Citizens Bank are headquartered in the city.

During the summer months Providence regularly hosts WaterFire, an environmental art installation of about 100 bonfires blazing just above the surface of the three rivers that pass through downtown, accompanied by classical and world music.