Arcade Providence

Six massive Ionic columns — each 45 feet high, quarried eight miles away in Johnston and hauled over dirt roads by oxen teams — announce a building that has been making bets on downtown Providence since 1828. The Westminster Arcade was the first enclosed shopping mall in the United States, a Greek Revival structure connecting Westminster and Weybosset Streets under a skylit roof. Declared a National Historic Landmark in 1976, it reopened in October 2013 as micro-loft residences above small ground-floor retail spaces. The oldest mall in America is now someone's home.