Amanda Quay Blount , a Providence resident and self-described history nerd , moved to the city with her husband in 2018 . On her father ’ s advice , she checked out the Providence Biltmore ( now the Graduate Providence ), and was struck by the ornate fixtures , gilded ceiling and famous glass elevator .
She contacted libraries , hoping to learn more about the building ’ s history , but discovered there were no books about the Biltmore .
Can you tell me a little about your research ? I started with the New York Times archives . The first article I found was about a taxi driver who was injured because a steel worker dropped a rivet from the top of the construction site of the Biltmore and it tore through the top of the cloth-topped jitney taxi and damaged the driver ’ s leg .
That really got me thinking . This hotel , for it to be featured in the New York Times , there must have been something really important about Providence . And then that led me to really dive into Rhode Island history .
I realized that I needed access to the Providence Journal . So I called the Community College of Rhode Island after digging around to try and find who had this data-
The ‘ City ’ s Hotel ’
Everyone from bootleggers to Buddy Cianci has graced the walls of the Providence Biltmore , and author Amanda Quay Blount has the receipts to prove it . By Dana Laverty
base . CCRI is awesome . So it ’ s November 2020 . The college buildings aren ’ t open . But , as a researcher , they gave me access to their database through their internal Wi-Fi , and all I had to do was go sit in their parking lot [ of the Liston campus ]. I probably spent two to three hundred hours in their parking lot , in my car , on my laptop , pulling PDFs of the Providence Journal archives .
The hotel is such an icon . Why do you think it ’ s been such a big part of Providence ’ s landscape throughout the years ? Everyone has a story about the Biltmore . It was the place to get married , it was the place to have your sweet sixteen or your debutante ball . It was the place . It was the ultimate place to be seen and to see people .
Archival postcards of the Providence Biltmore from 1915 ( far left ), 1950 ( center ) and 1921 ( far right ).
So she decided to write one herself . During the pandemic , she pored over history books and old Providence Journal stories to produce Meet Me at the Biltmore : 100 Years at Providence ’ s Most Storied Hotel . Published by Stillwater Books , it ’ s available at biltmorebook . com . Blount recently spoke to Rhode Island Monthly about writing a book during a pandemic while running a nonprofit and raising her nine-month-old daughter , Barrett .
It also was the center of entertainment in the city for a very , very long time . All the way through the 1960s it was the place to see up-and-coming acts and even established acts . Count Basie played there , the Andrews Sisters , Rudy Vallee — just so many people . It was sort of the center of the social world for so long and I think that cultural memory has been cemented in Rhode Islanders ’ minds forever .
Every year and every decade that the hotel went through , it transformed itself . It grew with the city and changed with the city and met the city where the needs of the city were . I ’ m hopeful that this book is as much a story of the hotel as it is about the city of Providence . See photography from the hotel ’ s 100th anniversary party on page 25 .
BOOK COVER AND PORTRAIT COURTESY OF AMANDA QUAY BLOUNT ; POSTCARD PHOTOGRAPHY COURTESY OF PROVIDENCE PUBLIC LIBRARY ’ S DIGITAL COLLECTION . THE INTERVIEW HAS BEEN EDITED FOR CLARITY AND LENGTH .
18 RHODE ISLAND MONTHLY l OCTOBER 2022