Architects to open Providence office

Jay Litman, former associate director of architecture for Keyes
Associates of Providence, is joining forces with Newport Collaborative
Architects to open a second office in the capital city.
The collaboration – with the working name Newport
Collaborative/Litman Architects – is the result of Litman’s
dissatisfaction with Keyes and friend Michael Abbott’s desire to immerse
himself fully in the restoration of Providence’s many historic
buildings.
Abbott, a principal at Newport Collaborative, designed the stage
expansion at the Providence Performing Arts Center.
With Litman, he plans to turn a couple of buildings at Grace Square,
in the heart of the arts and entertainment district into an urban bed
and breakfast owned by real estate developer Stanley Weiss.
Litman and Abbott have set up temporary offices in one of those
buildings, the Lederer on Matthewson Street, and will work there until
construction begins. After that, they will find a permanent home
elsewhere in the city, Abbott said.
Litman, who owned his own firm, Extrados, for 12 years, joined Keyes
in April 1995 at the urging of then-Chief Executive Officer Lawrence J.
Gannon.
He said he left Nov. 10, about a year after Gannon, because “the
values had changed, the priorities had changed, and they weren’t
changing the way I wanted them to.”
Robert Gray, project architect at Keyes, put it this way:
“I think the position of the firm is that there was a philosophical
difference.”