Providence College, River Avenue

The Providence College near River Avenue in Providence, Rhode Island is a Catholic College founded in 1917. It has been recognized as one of the top Regional Colleges in the Northeast for nine years by the US News and World Report. It has over four thousand students, counting both undergraduates and graduates. The Providence College’s 105-acre area is in the Elmhurst neighborhood on Smith Hill, which, in terms of topography, is the highest point of Providence. The college is made up of forty-four buildings: One suite-style residential building, three buildings dedicated to athletics, five apartment-style residential buildings, nine dormitories and twenty-one buildings for academics and administration. The college also has an impressive array of facilities that would be the envy of other schools. These include the Harkins Hall, which houses an administration office, a number of classrooms and the Blackfriars Theater; the Moore Hall, formerly the Antoninus Hall, which is home to Providence College’s intensive Development of Western Civilization program; the science complex, including the Albertus Magnus Hall, the Hickey Laboratory and the Sowa Hall.

The Feinstein Academic Center of the Feinstein Institute; the Phillips Memorial Library; the student union or the Slavin Center; the Accinno Hall which functions as the computer science building; the Smith Center for the Performing Arts; the Hunt-Cavanagh Hall for visual arts and art history, and its annex, the Ceramics Building; the St. Catherine of Siena Hall, which contains the Theology and Philosophy departments; the Howley, Kofler, Sullivan and the Service Building; the historic St. Dominic Chapel which now stands on the same spot where the War Memorial Grotto of Our Lady of the Rosary used to be; the Providence College’s own physical and power plants; the Providence College Mailroom, the intra-campus distributing body for mail and other packages; and the Student Health Complex. To house its over four thousand students, Providence College put up numerous residential halls and apartments. The oldest of which is the Aquinas Hall. It contains the Center for Catholic and Dominican Studies.

The school’s athletic facilities include the Schneider Arena and the Alumni Hall. The Alumni Hall is home to Providence College’s on-campus basketball court. The Hall was constructed in 1955 because of then-college president Rev. Robet J. Slavin’s basketball program and also to honor the school’s alumni who fought in the Second World War. The Alumni Hall was used exclusively by the men’s basketball program during the first seventeen years. Under the guidance of coach Mullaney, the men’s basketball team won the 1961 and the 1963 National Invitation Tournament. In 2001, the Alumni Hall was renamed in honor of Mullaney. The women’s basketball team started using the Alumni Hall in 1974. Throughout the years, the hall has been used as the venue for more competitions such as the National Invitation Tournaments and the Big East Conference women’s basketball championships.