01:00 AM EDT on Sunday, July 9, 2006

BY CHRISTINE DUNN
Journal Staff Writer

In North Providence's Fruit Hill, the pleasures of leafy suburbia are blended with the convenience of being in a densely populated neighborhood close to Providence. And a group of community-spirited residents is working to improve the quality of life here by slowing traffic on busy Fruit Hill Avenue.

"In our opinion, Fruit Hill Avenue should never have become a major highway," said Roland Mergener, president of the Fruit Hill Neighborhood Association. The road was widened in the late 1960s, and even though it curves through a tree-laden residential neighborhood, drivers tend to travel well above the speed limit, Mergener said.

In addition to the residences and mature trees, Fruit Hill Avenue is home to the Franciscan Missionaries of Mary religious complex and St. Mary's Home for Children.

A plan to install roundabouts at the Fruit Hill and Olney intersection and the Rhode Island College entrance at Fruit Hill Avenue and College Road has been approved and could start this year.

Mergener said he hopes the change will help Fruit Hill Avenue return to being a place where neighbors feel it is safe to walk and stop and chat with friends.

"It's a neighborhood I've always known. It's very peaceful. You have a mixture of houses, architectural designs, as opposed to living in an ant colony," said local historian Tom Greene, who lives on Olney Avenue. Greene moved to Fruit Hill in 1941, when he was 6 years old.

Greene said Fruit Hill was first settled in the 18th century by Ezra Olney, who built a house on what is now Smith Street. The farming community experienced rapid growth during the 1800s, and the population boomed after World War I, and again throughout the 1970s, Greene said.

Single-family houses on the market in Fruit Hill recently ranged in price from $209,000 for a two-bedroom Colonial to $445,000 for a 2,640-square-foot custom ranch. Although there is little land left for new development in Fruit Hill, condominiums are under construction in the neighborhood.

Real estate agent Sylvia Vallante is a North Providence resident and often works with clients in Fruit Hill. She said the neighborhood attracts many people who work nearby at Our Lady of Fatima Hospital and Rhode Island College.

She said the neighborhood has a strong sense of community, with many longtime residents who have chosen to stay and raise their families in Fruit Hill. "It's a great family neighborhood. It's close to everything. It's just a nice, safe community," she said.

"It's just home," said Central Avenue resident Edna Jenkins. "Everything you need is around, shopping malls, stores, banks." She lives with her husband of 50 years, Mal Jenkins, in a house her parents purchased in 1943.

"It was a lot nicer 50 years ago," Mal said, "but it's still pretty nice."

cdunn@projo.com / 277-7913

POPULATION: (North Providence, 2000): 32,411

MEDIAN SALES PRICE (North Providence, 2005): $259,900

PUBLIC SCHOOLS: James L. McGuire Elementary School (grades K to 5)

Ricci Middle School (grades 6 to 8)

North Providence High School

INTERESTING FACT: About 100 houses make up the Fruit Hill Historic District, including one of the area's oldest surviving houses, the Stephen Whipple House (1767) at the corner of Fruit Hill and Olney avenues.