Today, as part of an extensive downtown redevelopment project, riverside walkways and parks have been created in the city's center. Waterplace Park, where the Providence and the Woonasquatucket rivers meet, offers a 4-acre green space that includes an amphitheater for plays and concerts. In the summer, gondola rides are offered on the river and weekend fireworks light up the skies.

PrU had Theurer's Store, a general mercantile that offered everything from hardware and fabric to groceries. PRI had the first indoor mall in America, we learned, and now has Providence Place, an extensive downtown mall that also claims to offer everything the modern shopper might need. My sister and I laughed when we walked in the door. The mall's motto is "This Is The Place!"

We attended Providence Elementary, a square, yellow-brick building topped by a bell. It contained all eight grades — until the new part was added on when I was in the 5th grade.

PRI has the Rhode Island School of Design and Brown University, both schools of national stature. The School of Design attracts students from all over the country to study art and architecture (including Darrell Smith from Provo, whom we met while we were taking pictures in the park one rainy morning). The school's art museum is also legendary, with more than 80,000 pieces of art housed in 45 galleries and covering practically every style and genre from antiquity to modern times.

Brown University, one of the Ivy League schools, was founded in 1764 — the third college in New England and the seventh in America. It has been at its present location on College Hill since 1770. Founded as Rhode Island College, it was renamed in 1804 in honor of a $5,000 donation from merchant Nicholas Brown.

Ancient and august buildings surround the college green, which make for an interesting walk through the main campus.

PRI carries its love and interest in art and design to the outdoors with its famed outdoor sculpture. Pieces in and around the downtown area range from Bruno the bear, Dante and Marcus Aurelius Antoninus, among others on College Hill to the Independent Man and Oliver Hazard Perry at the Statehouse. There are memorials to the wars, statues of the founding fathers, sculptural tributes to mythical and symbolic figures as well as modern art. There are works by local artists as well as historic sculptors including Daniel Chester French, Henry Moore and Auguste Bartholdi.

About five years ago, PrU got its first statue, a memorial to local soldiers who participated and/or died in America's wars.