Industrial Trust Building — The Superman Building
Providence’s tallest skyscraper has a nickname that tells you everything: it looks exactly like the Daily Planet building from Superman.
At a glance
Completed in 1927, the Industrial Trust Building rises 26 stories above Westminster Street to dominate the Providence skyline with an Art Deco verticality that has made it the city’s most recognisable landmark. Its nickname — the Superman Building — comes from its unmistakable resemblance to the Daily Planet skyscraper in the Superman comics and films, a likeness noticed by generations of Rhode Islanders and visitors. Built as the headquarters of the Industrial Trust Company, it was the tallest building in Rhode Island, and it remains the tallest in Rhode Island. The building’s limestone-and-brick facade, stepped crown, and prominent location in downtown Providence make it as much a civic monument as an office tower.
Key facts
- Location: 111 Westminster Street, Providence, Rhode Island
- Completed: 1927
- Style: Art Deco
- Height: 26 stories, approximately 428 feet (130 m) — tallest building in Rhode Island
- Original tenant: Industrial Trust Company (banking)
- Nickname: Superman Building
- Status: National Register of Historic Places
History
The Industrial Trust Company commissioned the tower at the height of 1920s prosperity, when Providence was still one of the more important financial centres in New England. The building’s scale was a statement of institutional ambition: 26 floors of steel-framed construction faced in limestone and brick, designed to outclass anything else on the skyline and signal the Trust’s standing in the regional economy. When it opened in 1927, it was — and remains — the tallest building in Rhode Island, a distinction that brought genuine civic pride to a city determined to build at the scale of its ambitions.
The Industrial Trust Company was eventually absorbed into larger banking organisations, passing through several changes in ownership over the decades. Bank of America occupied the building as its Rhode Island headquarters for many years before vacating in 2013, leaving the skyscraper largely empty and prompting extensive public discussion about its future. The “Superman Building” has become a civic cause in Providence, with its fate drawing attention not only from preservationists but from anyone who has grown up with the tower as the defining mark of the Providence skyline.
What you see
The Industrial Trust Building’s most distinctive Art Deco feature is its stepped crown — a series of setbacks that narrow the tower as it rises and terminate in a flat observation level beneath a shallow ornamental finial. The effect is of a building that recedes gracefully as it climbs, adding perceived height without aggression. The facade is dressed in Indiana limestone at the base, transitioning to lighter brick above, with Art Deco geometric ornament concentrated at the entrance surround, cornice lines, and crown. The main Westminster Street entrance retains much of its original bronze metalwork and lobby marble.
From Providence’s downtown streets, the building functions as a constant reference point — tall enough to read from the East Side hilltop, from Interstate 95, and from the waterfront. Its stepped profile and relatively warm material palette (limestone and buff brick rather than the colder grey granite common in New York towers of the same era) give it a more civic character than a corporate one, which may explain why its vacancy has felt so acutely like a civic loss.
Practical information
- Status: building has been largely vacant since 2013; exterior and ground-level plaza publicly accessible
- Time needed: 20–30 minutes for exterior and historic streetscape
- Best view: from the corner of Westminster and Dorrance Streets, or from College Hill to the east
Getting there
The Industrial Trust Building is at 111 Westminster Street in the heart of downtown Providence. Providence Station (Amtrak and MBTA commuter rail from Boston) is a ten-minute walk north. RIPTA buses serve Kennedy Plaza, one block south. From Boston South Station, the MBTA Providence/Stoughton Line reaches Providence Station in approximately one hour.
Nearby
- Providence City Hall (1878) — Baroque Revival civic landmark, one block west
- WaterFire Providence — art installation on the downtown waterways, blocks away
- Rhode Island State House (1904) — McKim, Mead & White neoclassical dome, visible from downtown
Sources
- National Register of Historic Places nomination file, Industrial Trust Building, Providence, Rhode Island
- Providence Preservation Society, building documentation
- Rhode Island Historical Society collections
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