Maker
WITHIN THESE WALLS: Providence Place (red brick
building to the right) is a gigantic shopping, dining,
and entertainment complex in Providence, R.I.
HW: How did you shower and use the toilet?
Photograph by Richard Benjamin; illustration based on Providence Journal map by George Silvia
through this, and were in the space, you were then
connected to exit doors and the system of doors
and stairways that provided exits for the mall.
there are precautions to take, but through our
private entranceway it was a clean shot 24/7.
HW: Were there limited times that you could go in
and out?
HW: How did you get the building materials and
furniture in?
MT: If it was really thin, like lamps, doors, cinder
blocks, rugs, clothes, artwork — those could go
through the “squeeze hole,” as we called it.
If it was larger, we had to be very, very, very
careful and just get the object through any door
that led into a network of stairs and hallways that
was ultimately attached to our nondescript door
entrance (which we could open from the other
MT: There were entrances from the garage portion side or was left ajar most of the time.) Once you
of the mall to our space. The garage is architecturally got through any door and were not visible, you
a little over half of the mall. were pretty safe.
MT: No, we had 24-hour access through our private
entranceway. And the garage is open 24 hours a
day too.
HW: Did you have to walk through a parking garage
or something like that?
HW: Were there security guards you had to go by?
Security cameras?
MT: There is 24-hour security and a standard
network of cameras. As it should be, it is not an
overwhelming or oppressive amount, so movement
is not restrictive. In the garage or through the mall,
MT: Bathrooms were in the mall. If we had been
allowed to be there for the [full] year, we were
going to get a membership at the Westin gym.
The Westin is a luxury apartment/hotel attached
to the mall, and we would have worked out there
36 Make: Volume 14
