Slater Memorial Park, Pawtucket, Providence

The Slater Memorial Park, which includes various recreational facilities, is in Pawtucket in Providence, Rhode Island. Like its neighbors, Fall River, and New Bedford, Pawtucket has a large population of residents from Portugal. It is also has a large Liberian population, which is chiefly composed of refugees from Charles Taylor’s rule. Pawtucket, having a land area of over twenty square kilometers, is the fourth largest city in the state. It was founded as a town in 1671. There used to be two Pawtuckets: one to the west of Blackstone River and one to the east.

The latter was transferred to Rhode Island and the two sections of Pawtucket merged and were incorporated as a city in 1886. Pawtucket was home to the beginnings of the American Industrial Revolution. Pawtucket is often associated with another town in England: the Belper, Derbyshire. This was where Samuel Slater learned about Richard Arkwright’s Water Frame under the guidance of Jedediah Strutt. He later brought his extensive knowledge of the Water Frame to Pawtucket back to Pawtucket. In 1790, Samuel Slater built the first commercially successful cotton-spinning mill on the Blackstone River. The mill, called the Slater Mill, had a fully-mechanized power system that greatly increased the speed and efficiency of operations. Pawtucket had what is called the Downtown Circulator that makes traveling around the downtown portion of the city easier. The Circulator, a one-way loop, was patterned after the British ring roads concept.

Pawtucket is known for being a center for arts and culture. To maintain this image, Ann Galligan, a researcher from the Northeastern University was commissioned by the City of Pawtucket to conduct a series of studies and to come up with a plan to promote arts and culture in the city. The objective behind this plan is to attract and retain more artists to expand the city’s artists’ community, and to allocate sufficient resources to meet this community’s needs.

Every year in September, the City and the Pawtucket Arts Collaborative organize and manage the Arts Festival. There are many notables in the art industry from Pawtucket. They include cartoonist Don Bousquet, journalists Joel Garreau and Irving Levine, musician Wendy Carlos, independent film director Michael Corrente, silent film star Ruth Clifford, Grammy-nominated singer and songwriter Jon B, and many more. Pawtucket is also very much into sports. The city is home to the Pawtucket Red Sox which regularly appears in the McCoy Stadium. Pawtucket also has the Narragansett Race Track. The thoroughbred horse racing track opened in 1934 and closed in 1978 after hosting numerous competitions including the Gun Bow, the Hall of Famers War Admiral and the Seabiscuit.