Second Bloom
While living in Providence I turned my apartment into an antique store. I sourced antique art I thought was beautiful, photographed it, and built a website to share it with the community.
While living in Providence I turned my apartment into an antique store. I sourced antique art I thought was beautiful, photographed it, and built a website to share it with the community.
A detour into history.
There was a loft for sale on Providence's historical Federal Hill. At the time I was renting in Bushwick for $4,000 a month, a fourth floor walk-up, and for just under $300,000 I could own the world I lived in. I had just met someone I was really liking and we had already started talking about living together, so one weekend we rented a car and drove to the Ocean State to see what the vibe was.
Coming down Atwells Ave towards Eagle Square. The Crawford sits in the center of the complex.
I had always loved Providence. Growing up nearby I would drive there after school practically every day, grabbing pizza on Thayer Street, watching the Brown students confidently march around. Although Providence felt so far from a place I could actually live after becoming accustomed to a city like New York, I trusted it had a new lesson for me as an adult. The way it moves you is unexpected. It makes you bigger, stronger, more creative. It is queer in a different way than New York, especially the women, who I admire. They are tough, passionate, filled with love and pride. I think I needed to feel that sandpaper texture in my spirit a little bit.
The facade of The Crawford, still wearing the original branding for the Wholesale Seed Merchants that once occupied the building.
The loft was situated in the center of Eagle Square on Atwells Avenue. It stood out, a giant box of a building, a piece of history surrounded by a VA office and the infamous Vasilio's Pizza, notoriously known for their bad drivers. The Crawford, it said across the side of the building. Upon entering I could see that the inside did not match the vibe of the brick exterior. Ugly walls, carpets, uninspiring art. Very nursing home energy. Apartment 4A was at the end of a long hall on the right. The door opened to an absolutely charming loft, light pouring through huge windows, wooden floors, the original kitchen and bathroom from the conversion. The view was peaceful, a stream hugged the side of the building and framed the larger view of Rhode Island homes stacked up a hill. The space felt unappreciated, unseen for what it actually was. I wanted to hug it.
The power of Providence was in that room. Charming, full of opportunity, full of potential. A whole new chapter could live in these walls. It was enchanting and exciting and a little scary to think about making such a big jump, but this space had a pull, tickling our imagination, daring us to say yes. On the drive back to the city our minds were made up. My offer was accepted. We planned our move.
The loft during the protests that saved Eagle Square. Image credit: Art in Ruins.
The loft sat inside what was once the Valley Worsted Mills, built in 1866 on the border of Federal Hill and Olneyville. By the 1990s it had become Eagle Square, home to a vibrant community of artists who had quietly taken root inside its old walls. When developers threatened to tear it down for a strip mall, hundreds of people showed up to fight for it. The community protected it, and that history filled the building like a spirit that refused to leave during its shift.
Building the nest.
The home became an immediate project and the more we invested in it the more it gave back. Having a car made the world feel bigger than it ever had in New York. We were driving to furniture warehouses, discovering stores tucked into strip malls and side streets, finding objects with story and quirk. Each piece was teaching us to invest in our home, to be intentional about the world we were building inside it.
The space had a way of pulling you into whatever you were doing. Drawing, reading, just being.
My mom lived nearby and I would visit her on Tuesdays. My twin brother had just had a baby and my godson was there every time I walked through the door. Watching him grow each week, change, discover the world, was surreal. Being in my mom's home, watching her nurture something new into something whole, reminded me what home was actually for. The love you pour into a space comes back to you. That lesson was landing everywhere at once.
Mike in Scituate.
Our furniture journey brought us to Mike in Scituate (SIT-chew-it), Rhode Island. Countryside Consignments. You had to veer off the road to find his little shack filled with antiques and artwork from estate sales across Rhode Island and Massachusetts. Mike was the coolest guy in town. He would leave these auctions with whatever was left on the table, the junk of the junk that nobody wanted, and sell it to his community. When he saw how interested we were he started grabbing more art specifically, knowing we would show up to see his latest pieces.
Restoring a painting we named Gigi. She became a guardian angel in our space.
We would research everything we found. Who owned it. Where it came from. What town, what era, what life. We would bring pieces home, clean the dust off them, and watch them come to life. We restored them, photographed them, and hung them on the walls as part of a larger vision for the space. Having different types of art from different worlds and different eras all living together in our home was immediately inspiring. Especially since we were interacting with fewer people than we were used to, the art became our connection to culture, our drive to push forward. And then one day the entire wall was full and we looked at it and knew we had to share it.
The mobile and desktop designs for Second Bloom.
The product detail page from the Second Bloom website.
The store.
That is what gave birth to Second Bloom. Pieces would live with us for a while, find a home on our wall, and then find a new owner who would love them the same way. I built the brand and website using Next.js and Vercel, Contentful to manage the content, Notion to track inventory and orders, and Calendly so people could book appointments to come see the pieces in person.
The process of managing and logging the pieces started happening naturally. We were photographing them individually, enjoying the process of categorizing them, thinking about which price bracket they belonged in, which eras we had represented.
A fresh batch of sourced pieces on the floor, highlighting the diversity of our findings.
Second Bloom became our home, a project we were living inside of. Just as you clean the kitchen and organize your clothes, the tasks related to the business became intertwined in our daily routine, supporting both the growth of our home and our business concept. We would brainstorm reel ideas, find new product, think about ways to organize it and present it. Our inspiration spread outside the loft, finding artistic monuments in town to highlight and share on our page. Our love for our home, our art, spread through our windows, into our love and appreciation for the city and its artistic institutions.
The brand was inspired entirely by the loft itself. I wanted Second Bloom to feel like a chic art gallery in Providence. Minimal, quirky, historical, academic. The loft was a central figure in all of it. If we were being honest we really just wanted an excuse to bring people into this amazing space and let them feel what we felt every day inside it.
The space and all its art, living together on the wall.
What we were doing naturally leaned into interior design. Selling the artwork was the priority but showing the type of space these pieces could live in felt like a natural opportunity to show our customers who we were, which hands had found these pieces. After getting positive feedback on the design of the loft we started offering interior design consultations. The love we had poured into our own space, the way it had changed how we felt inside it, made us want to do that for other people. To understand their needs, their priorities, their interests, and build something around that. Interior design as an extension of who you are. That felt like a natural next chapter for Second Bloom and an avenue I hope to return to.
Little did I know that Second Bloom was my own second bloom after all.
Onward.
Second Bloom was born accidentally, guided more by Providence's creative spirit and history than any intention or conceived goal. It was the first time I watched how following a raw, genuine love for something can nurture a business naturally. Had I stayed longer I imagined a strong future for it. Our decision to leave came suddenly but under a thoughtful awareness that Providence was too small for the vision we had for ourselves.
Old mill lofts have a magnetic power, a story to tell, and this one was strong enough to pull us all the way from New York. Walking through the door felt like opening a random page in a book and deciding to start reading, a dark chapter, about rebirth, creativity, learning, mystery. These artworks reminded me how to dream, how to grow. The power of home. Of building a world that inspires you.
Family and friends celebrating in the space, surrounded by everything we had built.
When it was decided that our time was ending and the loft was going on the market, I used what we had built as the staging for the next buyer, to show them what kind of vision could live inside this home. He requested to keep all the remaining Second Bloom pieces. When we left the loft it was completely empty, except for the entire wall being covered in art. The pieces still hang there today.
Second Bloom's chapter has ended for now but you can still visit secondbloompvd.com to see the inventory and the vision we built around it.
Visiting Providence, Rhode Island?
The perfect long weekend, especially from New York. Just drive over and step back in time a little. Slower pace, beautiful architecture, incredible food, and a creative energy that sneaks up on you. You will not want to leave.
