Decline
The city began to see a decline by the mid-1920s as industries, notably textiles, shut down. The Great Depression hit the city hard, and Providence's downtown was flooded by the New England Hurricane of 1938 soon after. The city saw further decline as a result of the nation-wide trends, with the construction of highways and increased suburbanization. From the 1950s to the 1980s, Providence was a notorious bastion of organized crime. The legendary mafia boss Raymond Patriarca ruled a vast criminal enterprise from the city for over three decades, during which murders and kidnapings would become commonplace.
Read more about this topic: History Of Providence
Famous quotes containing the word decline:
“Our achievements speak for themselves. What we have to keep track of are our failures, discouragements, and doubts. We tend to forget the past difficulties, the many false starts, and the painful groping. We see our past achievements as the end result of a clean forward thrust, and our present difficulties as signs of decline and decay.”
—Eric Hoffer (1902–1983)
“Or else I thought her supernatural;
As though a sterner eye looked through her eye
On this foul world in its decline and fall,
On gangling stocks grown great, great stocks run dry,
Ancestral pearls all pitched into a sty,
Heroic reverie mocked by clown and knave....”
—William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)
“But only that soul can be my friend which I encounter on the line of my own march, that soul to which I do not decline, and which does not decline me, but, native of the same celestial latitude, repeats in its own all my experience.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)