For over a century, triple-deckers have been a staple of Rhode Island’s urban landscape.
The iconic three-floor homes were first built to accommodate immigrant industrial workers and their families. But while they’ve fallen out of favor over the years, some people think the houses could help solve today’s local housing crisis.
Wakefield filmmaker Marc Levitt explores that possibility in a new documentary called Triple Decker: a New England Love Story. Ocean State Media’s Luis Hernandez met up with Levitt and his co-producer Dennis Hlynsky to discuss the film, which has a preview screening on Saturday, Feb. 14 at the Providence Public Library.
Interview highlights
On why he wanted to tell the story of triple-deckers in Rhode Island
Marc Levitt: I was fascinated for years when I came to this area about the triple-decker and its physical form. And how it created a sense of calmness as I walked into the space and recognized that it was, sort of, giving you a sense of nurturing in life as you went into it. And being part of the way in which people understood about how to behave as human beings within a cultural setting.
The intimacy of them seems to be a very big part of this culture. One of the reasons is that they’re close together. There’s a lot of intimacy here, and when people come here to see them, there’s something very sweet about them, something that gives you a sense of community.
On how triple-deckers exemplify communal living in Rhode Island
Dennis Hlynsky: If you take the sort of a microcosm of three families living in a house – whether they’re related or whether they’re not, whether they’re working together – they have to deal with each other in a way that you don’t have to deal with your neighbors when you are living in a ranch house or when you’re living in a high-rise apartment.
Often the landlord lives in the house. If you take that constellation of family, that constellation of living together and multiply it by all of the houses that are in New England, there are stories in all of these houses. That story, I think, is the story of the New England culture.
There’s something about liberalism in New England; where that comes from. If you have to live next to your neighbor and you have to take the trash out at the same time, or you have to clear the snow off the sidewalks, there’s a kind of camaraderie. [You see it] when you walk up the stairs and somebody’s cooking something and their door is open, and later on they come down with a bowl of soup because they’ve made too much.
On the future of triple-deckers in Rhode Island
Hlynsky: The bulk of the triple-deckers were formed around the mills. When the mills moved out to the suburbs, the reason for the triple-deckers kind of fell by the by and they became tenements. They became these empty hulks. They became really cheap housing, and they became kind of unwanted.
I think the idea of tearing them down and building on the same lot an apartment building that has 16 small units; it just takes something away from the culture that I have come to love in New England. I hope that the richness of living in these houses will draw people out to say, “No, don’t tear this down. Let’s figure out ways to, you know, make them work.”
It’s easier to tear it down and to make something else. But what is going in its place? And will it be warm? Will it be functional? Will it be a community? Or are we trying to make a set of apartments where everybody lives apart from one another and never has to see anybody? Those are the decisions that we have to make as we contemplate this housing crisis.
