Antoinette Downing

Antoinette Forrester Downing (July 14, 1904 – May 9, 2001) was an architectural historian and preservationist who authored the standard reference work on historical houses in Rhode Island. She is credited with spearheading a movement that saved many of Providence's historic buildings from demolition in the mid 20th century and for her leadership was inducted into the Rhode Island Heritage Hall of Fame in 1978.

Antoinette Forrester was born in Paxton, Illinois, in 1904, to Jay and Myrtle E. (Hartley) Forrester. She grew up in Springer, New Mexico, and developed an early interest in architecture and art. After studying art and English literature at the University of Chicago and receiving her B.A. in 1925, she went on to study architecture at Radcliffe College. She married art historian George Elliot Downing and moved to Rhode Island in 1932, beginning her career as an historical preservationist a couple of years later. After researching the state's historic buildings, she published a survey, Early Homes of Rhode Island (1937). Covering 17th, 18th, and early 19th century houses, it became the standard reference on Rhode Island buildings of those periods.

Downing later worked with the newly formed Preservation Society of Newport County to develop a program to document and publicize the historic buildings on the island of Newport. These efforts resulted in a publication coauthored with Yale architecture professor Vincent Scully, The Architectural Heritage of Newport, Rhode Island (1952). The book won the Alice Davis Hitchcock Award, offered by the Society of Architectural Historians for the year's most distinguished work in architectural history.

In the 1950s and 1960s, Downing focused on preserving buildings in her College Hill neighborhood of Providence. Though many of these buildings were run-down and under threat of demolition to accommodate the expansion plans of Brown University and the Rhode Island School of Design, Downing recognized their historical value and with other area residents organized the Providence Preservation Society to save them. Her report on the neighborhood, College Hill: A Demonstration Study of Historic Area Renewal (1959), was adopted as the blueprint for restoring the neighborhood and led to the founding of the College Hill Historic District. Around 750 houses were restored in the district, and Downing's report became a model for other community-based historic restoration and renewal projects nationwide. As a direct result of Downing's efforts, Providence has one of the most extensive collections of habitable 18th- and 19th-century houses in the United States.

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