The 401
SPACES
BY DANA LAVERTY • PHOTOGRAPHY BY ANGEL TUCKER
Making Space
The Alcove firmly centers women, joy and a sense of community inside its well-appointed walls.
THERE’ S NOTHING EXCEPTIONAL about the built-in banquette tucked into the corner of The Alcove, the new feminist cultural center in Providence. Until you sit in it.“ I’ ve seen women sit on that bench, and they put their feet on the ground, and they go,‘ Oh!’ and then the tears come. I never realized how emotional it was for women to feel like they fit into furniture,” says Anne Holland, a founding board member.
Like most of the seating inside The Alcove, the banquette is scaled to fit women five feet, four inches tall. So when you sit in a chair, your feet don’ t dangle. They find the flooring, and you feel like you belong. You fit.
That’ s not accidental. The Alcove, which opened in January on Broadway, is a space for women and gender expansive people to form connections and community, with events and exhibits, a gallery and library space for members and nonmembers. Women played an integral role at every stage of the process to turn the one-story former religious supply store into a two-level community hub full of color, joy, connections and culture.
Architect Charlotte Breed Handy of CBH Architect LLC designed the building, with
THIS PAGE, FROM TOP: A book club room, designed with a distressed French apartment feel, anchors The Alcove’ s second floor; a rare book( The Elect) about Rhode Island’ s female legislators that Alcove board member Anne Holland found at a yard sale.
38 RHODE ISLAND MONTHLY I APRIL 2026