The Jewelry District of Providence, Rhode Island has a long and storied history. Jewelry manufacturing began in the Providence in 1794; by 1880 Rhode Island's jewelry industry accounted for more than one quarter of the nation's jewelry production. Over the following decades, the large jewelry factories that had once dominated the Jewelry District were closed or vacated. Then the construction of I-95 and I-195 in 1956 cut the roughly 100-acre district off from the rest of downtown and the neighborhood continued to languish in the 1970s. During these years the former industrial area languished aside from the few artists and small business owners who made the district their home. Brown University first forayed into the neighborhood in the 1990s and in 2003, purchased a building and made renovations. In 2007 the interstate was rerouted to the south, reunifying the Jewelry District with the downtown area. Since then, the Jewelry District has continued to grow and it is our mission to ensure that the planting of trees is a vital part of the district’s ecological impact.