North Providence fits a lot into 5.8 square miles: mill villages along the Woonasquatucket River, a stone-ender from 1705 on Smithfield Road, and three large parks. This map of North Providence prints the Allendale Mill in Centerdale, the Greystone Mill Historic District and the Greystone Historic District, the Joseph Smith House, the Otis Angell Gristmill and the Heaton and Cowing Mill, with Peter Randall State Park and Captain Stephen Olney Memorial Park, from Centerdale up to Greystone.
North Providence is in Providence County, between Providence on the south and Lincoln and Smithfield on the north.
KNOWOL made this map in 2026 from public survey records and gave it the look of an old atlas. The shaded relief around Peter Randall State Park and Captain Stephen Olney Memorial Park comes from United States Geological Survey elevation data. The streets come from Census Bureau files, down to Smithfield Road, and the Census Bureau puts the town at 5.8 square miles, 5.7 of them land. The Allendale Mill and the Joseph Smith House are on the National Register of Historic Places, and we checked them against National Park Service records. North Providence had 34,114 people at the 2020 census.
The smallest town in the smallest state
Settlers came here shortly after Roger Williams arrived in 1636, and North Providence was incorporated as a town in 1765. The first town took in parts of today’s Providence and Pawtucket. Slater Mill, which the town page calls the first fully mechanized cotton-spinning mill in the United States, was founded by Samuel Slater on the Blackstone River in North Providence in 1793, and that eastern section became part of Pawtucket in 1874. Since North Providence is incorporated as a town, it holds the distinction of the smallest town in the smallest state; Central Falls is smaller, but it’s a city. The town governed itself through a town council until 1974, when residents elected their first mayor, Salvatore Mancini, who served for 20 years. Its neighborhoods and villages include Allendale, Centredale, Fruit Hill, Greystone, Louisquisset, Lymansville, Marieville, Woodville and Geneva.
Smithfield Road
The early colonists here built stone-ender houses, and one still stands at 109 Smithfield Road: the Joseph Smith House, built in 1705 and now on the National Register. Stephen Olney was born in North Providence in 1755. He fought through the Revolution with the Continental Army, from the siege of Boston to Yorktown, where he led the American sappers over the top of Redoubt 10 and was badly wounded by bayonets. He recovered, and he later represented North Providence in the legislature for twenty years. Captain Stephen Olney Memorial Park shares his name, and it has sports fields and playgrounds.
Click to explore a larger preview. The digital watermark does not appear on printed maps.
Names on this map
These names are printed on this map.
Places: Centerdale, Greystone, Allendale, Geneva, Woodville and Marieville.
Streets and roads: Carriage Way, Verdi St, Read Ave, Dorman Ave, Baird Ave, Smith St, Zipporah St, Gale Ct, Eliot Ave, Ivan St and Jane St.
The mills on the Woonasquatucket
The Allendale Mill stands at 494 Woonasquatucket Avenue in Centerdale, on the banks of the river. John Holden Greene built its oldest buildings in 1822 for Zachariah Allen, who gave the mill fire safety gear its page calls advanced for the time: heavy fire doors, a sprinkler system, a rotary fire pump and copper-riveted hose, with a heavy fire wall around the picker room, where the loose cotton was, and roof shingles set in mortar. The company store from the same year still stands beside the mill, and additions followed in 1880, 1910 and 1947. The mill’s six buildings joined the National Register in 1973.
Farther up the river, Greystone grew between 1904 and 1912, when Joseph Benn and Company built the Greystone Mill and a village of duplexes and tenements to house its workers. The mill is a rambling brick complex on Greystone Avenue designed by Frank Sheldon and Son, with its dam across the river and a water tank on the Johnston side. The Greystone Mill Historic District joined the National Register in 2004, and the Greystone Historic District, the whole village around Greystone Road and Oakleigh Avenue, followed in 2008. Its most prominent building is the Greystone Primitive Methodist Church on Oakleigh Avenue, and four of its houses date as far back as 1822, before the mill. The Otis Angell Gristmill and the Heaton and Cowing Mill are on the map too.
Around North Providence
The town’s other major park is Governor John A. Notte Memorial Park, with a freshwater beach, a campground and the Camp Meehan hall overlooking the Wenscott Reservoir, and it hosts the Memorial Day festival, the Fourth of July fireworks and Pumpkins in the Park. Part of Rhode Island College is in North Providence. People from the town include Joseph A. Zinno, who built the Zinno Olympian ZB-1, which the town page calls the first human-powered aircraft to fly in the United States, the basketball player Ernie DiGregorio, the musician John Cafferty, and Zellio Toppazzini, named the Rhode Island Reds’ Player of the Century.
This map of North Providence is a good choice for an office, library or den, and it can help teach children the geography and history of a small town of mill villages. KNOWOL made it in 2026 for people who call North Providence home, from Centerdale to Greystone, and it shows the town as it looks today. Zoom in on the preview above to explore the details, then click here to get your copy of the North Providence map.
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