Forgotten Providence

Missing a wholelotta’ windows.

Public records on 143 Hanover St:

- Boarded in 2001
- Foreclosed 2005
- Sold 2006 for $280K
- Foreclosed 2008

Was most likely owner occupied prior to house contents being dumped onto curb.

See that gem of a home to the right—a thoroughly modern update on the post-war craftsman [wink], coulda’ been yours in 2006 for only $205K. We used to build nice houses like that which have held up remarkably well considering the circumstances. What kind of odds you give it against its ancestors aging?

Anyone involved in the $340K sale OUT OF FORECLOSURE of this home in October 2006 needs a public flogging.

It’s hard to tell, but since then, it looks to have changed bank hands several times and was occupied earlier this year. But that’s a bank boarding job, so we can say it’s been foreclosed on again.

Let’s recap. Prior to this boarded state, 24 Hanover St. was:

- sold in Nov. 2004 at $266K
- foreclosure Sept. 2006
- immediately sold in in Oct. 2006 for $340K

Obviously, that sale didn’t work out either.

Corner of Belleuve and Bucklin.

Again, good looking out from toad:

So the story on this place as far as I know- 42 Arch had families in it since 04- went vacant around December 08 or January of this year I think. I noticed kids going to the back in March, but thought they were just cutting through to Wilson St. Should have known better. Its still unmolested from the front, but the backside reveals what really has been going on…

Stump also cruised the backside and gave a peek in the open doorways—this house is done.

Revisit June 29th, 2009

Video from the ProJo:

Multiple foreclosures possible here since 2006. Once or currently owned by the venerable Deutsche Bank.

Abandoned prior to 2004. Picked up flipped in 2005 for $161K. Foreclosed on in 2006, banked owned and traded between two investors in May 2008 for $28K.

Still vacant.

Near site of The Donk.

Revisit June 2009

Bank owned and vacant for about a year now. Asking $70K. Two more foreclosures within 150ft either way, plus the adjacent Mt. Vernon‘s and Prairie Ave‘s. Among others.

This area has always perplexed Stump. The one-by-three block area from Pearl St. through Linden St. between Hayward St. and Pine St. is marked by an enclosure of black painted chain link fence, approximately five feet tall. Where a porch stumbles onto a street, many times the chain link blocks access to the immediate sidewalk. Instead, footpaths through the grass run between houses to gaps in the fence, similar to how players squeeze through breaks in fencing between little league baseball diamonds.

In all, 18 multifamily houses are surrounded by this fencing, all attributed to the same owner, Phoenix Griffin Group LP (Stump speculates this particular real estate outfit may have purchased these entire blocks from the [now defunct/inactive/encumbered/project-less?] Providence Redevelopment Agency in the mid ’90s*).

All told, the company is listed as the owner of 27 properties throughout the city. All appear to be in good (financial) standing, though the company was named in an independent 2002 study on lead poisoning in children from the Brown Center for Environmental Studies calling for accountability and prosecution of landlords failing to safely notify tenants of lead presence/remove said lead presence.

Other than being grouped inside the Phoenix Griffin Landlord Company barracks, 240 Pearl does not appear to share the same owner. As history shows—corroborated by the small amount of public data available, time stamped pictures, and answers from neighbors, 240 Pearl St is an orphan, left rotting, gutted, sad, and above all, porchless. The concrete foundation suggests near-recent construction, but nothing seems to show the house was ever occupied. Which begs the question; was this ever a home?

240 Pearl St: What and Why?

_{*speculation—I have followed no paper trail}

$30K

June 2009 revisit

*photo by Funsickle