For almost half a century, the Robinson Green Beretta Corporation has reaped a rich harvest of architectural awards by understanding the needs of its clients and by adapting its projects to conform with the style of the surrounding areas in which they're placed.
Joseph Beretta, Jr., vice president of finance and administration, explains that his firm has succeeded by offering a full-service approach to its clients. Its 47-member staff includes two interior designers, an architect who handles historic restoration projects exclusively, and six civil and structural engineers.
With 19 registered architects, the Providence-based firm is the largest in Rhode Island and has many repeat customers, according to Beretta. "We give them the best product for the money they have to use. We provide multi-dimensional assistance," he said. "We have no signature architectural style. We're professionals who adapt a project to a specific surrounding."
Repeatedly cited by the American Institute of Architects for the excellence of its work, Robinson Green Beretta has left its stamp on Providence through such projects as its renovation of Hoppin House on the East Side of Providence, a residence it occupied as a commercial office for 36 years. The firm restored the Italianate revival villa to its former splendor, repairing the cornice work, refurbishing the decaying brownstone, and reviving the luster of Hoppin House's marble fireplaces and wood paneling.
Another achievement the Robinson Green Beretta staff is proud of is the phoenix-like revival of Brown University's Robinson Hall, a Venetian gothic style structure that had fallen into disrepair. Renovation recaptured the former glow of the building's stained glass windows and regained the former elegance of Robinson Hall's window sills and cornices of olive Nova Scotia freestone and blue slate.
Other Providence structures that have enhanced the architectural face of Providence include the firm's Rhode Island School of Design Students Living Complex and the Rhode Island/Women & Infants Hospital's Cooperative Center. The Center is distinguished by its terra cotta brick facade, and the streaming lighting of custom oak-paneled lounge which overlooks an exterior terrace. Its spacious interiors include an oak and black-marble check-in desk. Interior spaces were designed to be comfortable, soothing and conveniently situated for patient use.
Now situated in the Foundry Complex in Providence, where the firm moved in 1987, Robinson Green Beretta has been honored by the International Masonry Institute for its construction of Salve Regina University's McKillop Library in Newport. The Institute also cited the firm for its masonry work for the Frank Licht Judicial Complex in Providence, for which it won a restoration award.
Salve Regina's library marks one of the firm's outstanding achievements. The structure integrates itself into the encompassing elegance and grandeur of Newport's historic mansions. The library features rough, thermal and polished face granite, as well large windows, and gable ornamentation. It has a sloped lead-coated copper roof and gothic dormers.
A walk through Robinson Green Beretta Corporation's headquarters illuminates its philosophy of adapting to, as well as improving, the physical surroundings in which it designs and builds its structures. A two-story sky lighted atrium floods the offices with light. Staff members work amid translucent, seven-foot tall partitions that have transformed the historic former pattern shop building from a grim and gloomy 19th century factory to an office setting awash in sunlight and spaciousness.