In the early 2000s, Adriana Valdez Young heard a radio commercial for the brand-new Providence Place mall, a then-groundbreaking development built to draw luxury shoppers to Rhode Island’s capital.
In the ad, a woman breathlessly fawned over the shopping center, exclaiming she wished she could live there since it had everything she could ever need.
“I just had this idea: Oh, we should live in the mall,” Valdez Young, an artist, said in a new documentary.
That idea grew into a four-year adventure spearheaded by Valdez Young and her then-husband Michael Townsend, also an artist. Slowly, their group of friends moved cinder blocks, a sofa, a dining table, rugs, and a PlayStation console into a hidden hallway deep within the mall’s maze-like system of underground corridors and emergency exits.
Boston Globe/Boston Globe via Getty Images
The hideaway — and the art the group created there over four years — is documented in director Jeremy Workman’s latest film, “Secret Mall Apartment,” now screening in Providence and New York City. The film will have a wider release in Los Angeles and additional cities in April.
Local artists saw the secret apartment as a protest against a changing city
Courtesy of Jeremy Workman
In the 1980s and 1990s, city officials were determined to revitalize Providence’s downtown to make it a destination, and not just a stop on the way to other major cities like New York City and Boston.
The Providence Place mall was designed to be an economic engine, with higher-end department stores like Lord & Taylor and Nordstrom and its own movie theater.
When the mall finally opened in 1999, it prompted real-estate developers to reconsider building other new projects in surrounding areas. One target was the nearby abandoned factory known as Fort Thunder, which served as a performance space, playhouse, and artists’ lofts.
Fort Thunder was demolished to make way for a planned strip mall and grocery store, which angered members of the creative community who felt steamrolled by the process.
“There was no effort to bring people along,” Valdez Young said in the documentary.
The apartment was peaceful and felt like a television set
Courtesy of Michael Townsend
Providence Place Mall has a unique design. With a river cutting through the center and rounded edges to accommodate nearby interstate I-95, its odd floor plan created the perfect hidden alcove.
“The building has a bunch of weird interesting shapes. The space we discovered was really a negative space in between two planes of the building,” Colin Bliss, one of the artists who helped build the apartment, said in the film.
The group of friends accessed the secret apartment in two ways. First, they could shimmy between open spaces within a stairwell in the parking garage.
Second, they could get to their hideout from inside the mall through a series of emergency exits and hidden hallways. Footage in the film shows the group letting the exit alarms blare until they eventually turn off while sneaking items into the space.
Over the years, the group bought an antique china cabinet, a sectional sofa, a glass-top dining table, and other domestic wares from the Salvation Army and snuck them into Providence Place. Sometimes they would make a purchase from the food court so they would have a receipt in case they were stopped.
The apartment even had its own waffle maker.
“It made you feel really relaxed,” Valdez Young said in the documentary. “It’s a little prison-like, because there’s this cement wall and no natural light, and you could be discovered at any moment. There was this weird sense of freedom.”
Related stories
Business Insider tells the innovative stories you want to know
Business Insider tells the innovative stories you want to know
Mall security guards eventually foiled the artists
Boston Globe/Boston Globe via Getty Images
The group mostly used the apartment as a meeting space to brainstorm and plan various art projects, including custom installations in children’s hospitals and a New York City portrait project honoring 9/11 victims.
They may have slept overnight there, but many of the artists said in the film that they also had other homes at the time.
After four years, the group started to suspect mall staff were onto them. Various items from the apartment, like photo albums and the Playstation console, went missing.
The group believed security guards had found the apartment and were using it as their own hangout when the artists weren’t around. They decided to only visit the apartment after hours to avoid getting caught.
One day, Townsend broke the rule because he wanted to show the hideaway to a friend who was visiting from out of town. During their visit, security broke in and caught Townsend and his friend. He was banned from the mall for life and the apartment was permanently sealed.
Courtesy of Jeremy Workman
The ban, however, has apparently been lifted. Townsend recently attended screenings of the “Secret Mall Apartment” documentary at Providence Place itself, according to local newspaper The Providence Journal.
