41.7866° N, 71.5578° W
PROVIDENCE
Most Famous People Born in Providence, United States
- Notable people
- 736
- Peak decade
- 1940s
- Median birth year
- 1927
- Most distinctive
- Bank 5.8×
Providence's Bank bench is what's left of the old Rhode Island mercantile and textile fortunes that built Federal Hill and the Brown family empire, with a Lawyer class drawn from the same patrician pipeline. The Baseball count reaches back to the Providence Grays of the 1880s, while a modern RISD-and-Brown creative vein runs through the Music and Screenwriter lines — Damien Chazelle and a thick seam of film composers.
One face per decade — the most globally famous figure born in Providence during each.
Notable Births by Decade
Click a decade to filter the list below. Peak: 1940s with 86 notable births.
What Providence Is Known For
Click any row to filter the list of people below.
Politician is Providence's biggest profession — 16% of all notables (116).
Providence over-indexes on bank — 5.8× the global rate.
Providence under-produces football — only 0.3× the global rate.
Profession Mix Over Time
Each band shows a profession family's share of Providence's notable births by decade. Hover the chart for the breakdown at any decade.
- Politics & Law
- Sports
- Film & TV
- Writing
- Music
- Science
- Other
- Field: Painter Clear ×
Ellen Gallagher
Born 1965
William Congdon
1912 - 1998
George Hitchcock (artist)
1850 - 1913
Dodge MacKnight
1860 - 1950
Elizabeth Okie Paxton
1877 - 1971
R. H. Ives Gammell
1893 - 1981
Mabel May Woodward
1877 - 1945
Eugene Kingman
1909 - 1975
Marcus Waterman
1834 - 1914
Charles De Wolf Brownell
1822 - 1909
Maxwell Mays
1918 - 2009
John Edward Costigan
1888 - 1972
Frederic Whitaker
1891 - 1980
Maggie Siner
-
Herbert Fink
1921 - 2006
Walter Francis Brown
1853 - 1929
Clement Micarelli
1929 - 2008