From a Press Release concerning the new listing of PS&I on the National Register, issued by the RIHPHC office, September 2005
The Providence Steel and Iron Company Complex (PS&I) is a group of one- and two-story,predominantly brick industrial buildings located on a three-acre lot at the corner of Sims and Kinsley avenues south of the Woonasquatucket River. The site includes the original structural steel building (which housed the office, pattern room, and drafting rooms), an ornamental iron building, a bar shop, a maintenance shed, and a detached office building. These buildings are arranged around the periphery of a central yard served by a series of steel gantries and cranes and a narrow gauge rail that allowed for the manipulation of materials, stock, and fabricated structures and for transport into the various buildings.
Providence Steel and Iron Company (PS&I) was created as a subsidiary of Builders Iron Foundry (BIF), a Providence company established in 1822. BIF manufactured precision iron castings, water meters, and architectural ironwork in a plant downtown. New contracts and space constraints allowed the company to purchase about 20,000 square feet of land at the corner of Sims and Kinsley Avenues for its Structural and Architectural Department. This offshoot of BIF was incorporated as Providence Steel and Iron (PS&I) and purchased by Michael F. Houlihan in 1905.