Fields Point (also known as Field's Point) is a historic park in the Washington Park neighborhood of Providence, Rhode Island jutting into Narragansett Bay right near the Providence River and Route 95.[1]
The point was named after William Field, a British colonist who settled in Providence, RI with an acreage and a house on what is now South Main Street. In the 19th century, Fields Point Farm, a 37acres park, developed as the major recreational area in the city until Roger Williams Park was created in 1871.[2] Visitors came to the Point to visit Colonel Atwell's Clam House, Edgewood Beach, The Washington Park Yacht Club and Kerwin's Beach.[2] Following the attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941, the US Maritime Commission selected Field's Point as a location for a shipyard as part of the Emergency Shipbuilding Program. Much of what had previously been there was sacrificed to wartime necessity. The yard was eventually taken over by the Walsh-Kaiser Company. Throughout the 1950s and 1960s, one of the piers of the former shipyard was used to house a US Naval Reserve center. The Submarine USS Lionfish was berthed at the pier for use as a training vessel from 1960 until circa 1970. She now lies only a few miles away at Battleship Cove in Fall River, Massachusetts. The facility is now a (combined Army, Navy, Marine) Armed Forces Reserve Center.
In the 1950s, Providence started using Fields Point as a landfill, eventually connecting the Point with nearby Starve Goat Island.[2] In the 1960s, entrepreneur, Melvin Berry started "bar, marina, swim club, amusement park, bowling alley, drive-in theatre, indoor ice skating rink and a nightly Hawaiian dance show" in Fields Point.[2] Circa the mid to late 1960s, Fields Point was also utilized as an operations base for high speed testing between Westerly and Boston of the Gas turbine Turbo Train,[3] before acting as a train graveyard for the three trainsets after September 1976.[4] In 1973, Johnson & Wales University established a facility in Fields Point, but by 2001, the university leased land to Save The Bay for an educational center.[2] In late 2012 a three-turbine wind farm was installed at Fields Point to provide energy for the waste water treatment plant.[5]