Vice and Virtue Walking Tour

21 Memorials to Vincent A. “Buddy” Cianci Jr.
Collaboration with Sara Emmenecker and Anya Ventura

Vincent A. “Buddy” Cianci Jr. is the longest serving mayor in the history of Providence. He is credited with spearheading the pivotal Providence Renaissance, yet his mayoral tenure abruptly ended in 2002 when he was sentenced to four years in federal prison for charges of racketeering and conspiracy.

This project proposes a memorial to him without erasing these complexities yet embracing them as emblematic of Providence’s own varied history. In this memorial we commemorate the important dates and locations of Cianci’s career through a series of twenty-one site-specific markers –one for each year of Cianci’s time in office– and an accompanying map.

Affixed to existing lampposts, signposts and telephone poles, the site-specific markers are juxtaposed against locations tied to critical dates in Cianci’s political life. The markers place the narrative information, adapted from Stanton’s The Prince of Providence, in conversation with the built environment; the buildings themselves stand as monuments to Cianci’s impact on the city’s physical, civic, and cultural landscape.