Interview with Rosalind Weir

Rosalind (Roz) Weir was recognized with a Rhody Award last month for her role in transforming Tiverton Four Corners into what we know it as today. She and her husband, Jim, an architect who passed away in 2013, foresaw the potential of the village and started restoring properties at Four Corners in 1983. Over forty years, they rehabilitated and developed 13 buildings at Four Corners, curated the businesses that make it a vibrant shopping and dining destination, established an arts center, and created a business association which not only allows for common parking, water and sewage, but ensures that the buildings are protected and maintained into the future. Roz attended Skidmore College, RISD Architecture School, and Radcliffe Institute before establishing a landscape design business.

To learn more about the transformation of Tiverton Four Corners, click here to view the videos of all the 2025 Rhody Awardees. (LINK)

1. How did you first become interested in historic preservation?

As an eight-year-old, I moved with my family to Winston-Salem, North Carolina, a historically rich area which included the restored village of Old Salem near my parents’ house. This little village was always the first place visited when out-of-town guests arrived and consistently brought the most interesting conversations into our home. The Moravians had built a wonderful community, each building housing a separate function and purpose. The architecture was a combination of Germanic and Greek Revival styles. Most important, and what made the greatest impression on me, was the strong and viable community living and working in these original buildings.

2. You won a Rhody Award last month for your rehabilitation of Tiverton Four Corners—a 40+ year project.  What was your vision and how did you and your husband Jim determine this was going to be your lifelong’s work?

Having spent many summers traveling around New England with our children, visiting villages like Nantucket, Newburyport, and Peacham, Vermont (to name a few), we had a strong sense of the vitality and beauty in a village/town full of historic buildings housing commercial and retail businesses. Although Four Corners in 1983 was just beginning to be a village of small, privately-owned shops, it was clear that the bones of 18th and 19th century architecture were there despite a few more recent additions such as a gas station. In 1973, Four Corners had been put on the Register of Historic Places. More importantly, the village consisted of buildings close enough together to enable walkability. Jim especially had a strong sense of integral and contiguous architectural design so that the buildings of the village felt stylistically continuous while still accommodating modern imperatives like accessibility and abundant visitor parking.

Once we began the project, first renovating and restoring old buildings, we realized we could add a few more buildings in the prevalent Shaker style and, in one case, a building that could have been characterized as ‘post-modern’. (With subjective hindsight, that experiment was fine but did not age as well, which only underscores the timelessness of the traditional styles we originally sought to preserve.)

Wisely, Tiverton had adopted new zoning in 1997 which allowed for two buildings to occur on a site of 12,000 square feet. Pedestrian access to everything has always been important.  Cars were parked in lots behind the main street to allow for better pedestrian circulation while dealing with the car “problem”.

The project over the years took up more and more of our time and investment — requiring a commitment to ensuring that businesses could thrive. In order to facilitate and enable the realization of this vision of a sustainable village of businesses, we brought in art exhibits, antiques, artists, and artisans. We formed the Four Corners Arts Center to create attractions for our new market.

3. What advice do you have for someone looking to restore commercial spaces within a community?

Understand potential uses and needs to be filled in your community. Try to create appeal for a renter/buyer who wants an intimate retail space. If necessary, be prepared to take a long position and structure leases that give good tenants the time and opportunity to become established. To this end, we even started our own shop known as the Cottage at Four Corners, later sold to a more experienced vendor.  

Know that success may not happen on the first try. It could take several tries over many years. Fortunately, we were able to line up patient, relatively inexpensive capital which aligned with these goals and gave us a longer time horizon. Without this investment, much of what we were able to accomplish would have been even more challenging, requiring us to navigate the complex networks of preservation grants, bank loans, and incentives, which also exist for preservation work.

4. You're a landscape designer. How does working on a historic property inform your decisions on landscape design?

The landscaping of grounds at Four Corners is reflective of the simplicity of the architecture. The village intentionally has a rural feel. Choice of indigenous plant materials in many cases is part of the “formula”. Use of stone walls and paths as well as brick creates a consistent vocabulary of a welcoming scale and visual openness.

The newer landscaping by owners of Groundswell, interestingly, is reminiscent of the formality of Nantucket but feels appropriate to the more and more prevalent use of outdoor spaces by customers.  Some of this need arose as a result of the pandemic.

Certainly, the ability of the public to be able to sit and walk in the spaces surrounding buildings is an important asset of Four Corners. The sculpture garden at the Meeting House, now in its 25th year, is an inviting feature that beckons people to leave the fray of commerce into a more contemplative setting.

There are no “formal” gardens at Four Corners as might have been the case in the 18th century. Maintenance of all landscapes is an ongoing project for the owners at Four Corners and dictates a level of concern for simplicity and sustainability.

5. You set up the properties in Four Corners so they have common protections and services and can be sold individually.  What do you hope for the future of Four Corners and what advice do you have for this new generation of caretakers?

I hope and trust that the structure of these agreements will encourage owners to work together, always keeping in mind the common interest in providing a rural village atmosphere which continues to be conducive to gathering in numbers, large and small.