Street view of Unpolished Legacies at 233 Westminster in Providence, Rhode Island. The work of Holly Ewald (top) and Benjamin Lundberg Torres Sánchez (bottom) appear in the window.

Unpolished Legacies Online is a digital resource that supports instruction about Rhode Island’s Indigenous, botanical, industrial, and post-industrial heritage using Mashapaug Park as a focal point and springboard for study.

Cultural history can be found all around us here in Rhode Island, in the streets and neighborhoods where we live. One of the richest sites for multidisciplinary learning about the arc of this country’s history can be found at Mashapaug Park, on Mashapaug Pond, where the once world-renowned Gorham Factory stood. Currently, this site is home to Dr. Jorge Alvarez High School and a Tesla Dealership.

Mashapaug Cove and the surrounding park in Fall of 2020.

The purpose of this project is to connect students with local history, flora, and fauna, as well as to provide easily accessible content to share different perspectives on the impact of the Gorham Silver Manufacturing Company on Rhode Island. These perspectives were initially brought together by the 2019 Unpolished Legacies project. This educational website offers resources to support place-based science, social studies, and art instruction in Rhode Island’s middle and high schools.

Access our Resources 

Installation view including the work of students from Dr. Jorge Alvarez High School, Holly Ewald and Benjamin Lundberg Torres Sánchez. (clockwise from left)

The content of this site was conceptualized and gathered by Holly Ewald and Becci Davis with the support of an advisory group of educators from four Rhode Island middle and high schools. Content related to Unpolished Legacies was developed with students from Providence College and a student research assistant from Brown University. In the Fall of 2022, Professor Nuria Alonso Garcia’s Global Studies and Social Change students interviewed artists and wrote essays contextualizing their contributions to Unpolished Legacies. The following spring, students taking the same course taught by Professors Nuria Alonso Garcia and Maria Bose developed topic-specific Field Trip guides for the website. In the Fall of 2023, Emily Bluedorn, who at the time was a graphic design MFA candidate at the Rhode Island School of Design, joined our team as the web designer. In Summer of 2024, Samantha Ho, a research assistant funded by the SPRINT| Undergraduate Teaching and Research Awards (UTRA) program joined our team to interview artists, write features, and edit content.

Read More About Us

Field trip visit with social studies students from Central High School.

As Brendan Haggerty, the Curriculum Coordinator from The Greene School in West Greenwich, Rhode Island stated, “Mashapaug Pond contains all the lessons we need to teach.” This website provides useful resources that will enable students to think critically about place and time and explore this particular site through interdisciplinary scholarship, artwork, and experiential learning. Ewald and Davis believe that through this multi-pronged approach to learning, students will build creative thinking and a sense of belonging and stewardship with their local environment and community.

Meet the Contributors

This project was made possible with support from our funders and partners:

AS220
Jacques Bidon
Janaya Kizzie
John Nicholas Brown Center for Public Humanities & Cultural Heritage
Neal Walsh
Rhode Island Labor History Society
The City of Providence Department of Art, Culture + Tourism 
UPPArts

Artists and curators, Holly Ewald and Becci Davis, talking with featured artist Benjamin Lundberg Torres Sánchez at the exhibition’s opening reception.
Artists and curators, Holly Ewald and Becci Davis, talking with featured artist Benjamin Lundberg Torres Sánchez at the exhibition’s opening reception.
Copies of Unpolished Legacies Zine, printed under the supervision of Master Printer Jacques Bidon at AS220’s Community Printshop.
Copies of Unpolished Legacies Zine, printed under the supervision of Master Printer Jacques Bidon at AS220’s Community Printshop.
Field trip visit with students from Central High School.
Field trip visit with students from Central High School.
Field trip visit with social studies students from Central High School.
Field trip visit with social studies students from Central High School.
Installation view including the work of Erik Gould, Tina Tryforos and The Long Table, an interactive installation developed by artist-scholar Lois Weaver. (clockwise from left)
Installation view including the work of Erik Gould, Tina Tryforos and The Long Table, an interactive installation developed by artist-scholar Lois Weaver. (clockwise from left)