Thousands of shoppers moved through the enormous Providence Place Mall every week. They browsed department stores, watched movies, ate at the food court and returned to their cars without noticing anything unusual.

But hidden inside the building was a locked door that did not appear to lead anywhere important. Behind it stood a furnished apartment with couches, rugs, lamps, artwork, a television, a dining table and even a cabinet filled with china.

The space belonged to eight Rhode Island artists led by Michael Townsend and Adriana Valdez-Young. Beginning in 2003, the group quietly transformed an unused 750-square-foot section of the Providence, Rhode Island, shopping complex into a private living space. They maintained it for approximately four years before mall security discovered it in 2007.

The artists did not live there continuously in the traditional sense. Most maintained homes elsewhere, but they slept in the apartment, spent extended periods inside it and used it as a meeting place for creative projects. Their unusual experiment remained almost completely hidden from the public until one visit brought the entire operation to an abrupt end.

The Idea Began With a Changing City

Providence Place opened in 1999 as part of a major effort to transform downtown Providence. The enormous shopping center included department stores, restaurants, entertainment venues and a movie theater.

To many city leaders, it represented economic growth. To some members of Providence’s arts community, however, the mall also symbolized a broader wave of development that was pushing artists out of inexpensive warehouses and informal creative spaces.

Several members of the future apartment group had connections to Fort Thunder, an influential artist-run space inside a former mill complex at Eagle Square. Artists used the building for performances, exhibitions, music and communal living until redevelopment forced them out and the structure was demolished.

At roughly the same time, a Providence Place radio advertisement presented the mall as a place containing everything a person could possibly need. The commercial jokingly suggested that the shopping center was so complete that someone might want to live there.

The artists decided to test that promise.

Their initial plan was relatively modest: secretly remain inside the mall for about a week and experience the building as something more than a place to shop. But once they began exploring areas normally unseen by customers, they realized the mall contained forgotten spaces with no obvious commercial purpose.

What began as an experiment soon became a much larger project.

They Found an Empty Space Inside the Building

Michael Townsend had watched Providence Place being constructed between 1997 and 1999. Because he lived nearby and frequently passed the construction site, he developed a general understanding of the mall’s unusual shape and internal structure.

He remembered seeing an area that did not appear to become a store, office or parking space after construction ended.

During the artists’ first week inside the mall, Townsend used those memories to guide the group through service areas, emergency passages and sections of the parking structure. Eventually, they reached an empty concrete space hidden within the building.

The approximately 750-square-foot area had reportedly been used to store materials during construction. Once the mall opened, it was left largely unused. It was not a conventional room with an obvious entrance, and shoppers had no reason to know that it existed.

Members of the group could reach the location through a difficult route near a parking-garage stairwell. Another route involved interior passages, emergency exits and corridors that were rarely seen by the public.

The awkward access was inconvenient, but it also helped protect the secret. Anyone carrying furniture into the space had to move slowly and avoid attracting attention from employees, maintenance workers and security officers.

The group decided the empty area would become their new apartment.

Furniture and Cinder Blocks Entered Piece by Piece

Transforming a raw section of a shopping mall into a believable home required more than placing a mattress on the floor.

The artists constructed a cinder-block wall to separate the apartment from the surrounding service area. Reports and the later documentary describe more than two tons of blocks being moved into the building. A plain utility-style door with a functioning lock was installed so that the entrance would resemble an ordinary part of the mall’s infrastructure.

Inside, the group gradually assembled a surprisingly domestic collection of furniture.

The apartment eventually contained a sectional couch, a loveseat, tables, dining chairs, lamps, rugs, framed artwork, blankets and a cabinet displaying china. There was also a television, a video-game console and a waffle maker.

Some furniture came from secondhand stores. Other objects were bought inside or near the mall and then quietly transported through the service routes. The artists sometimes carried food-court receipts so they would appear to be ordinary customers if anyone questioned them.

Extension cords supplied electricity for lights and entertainment equipment. Running water was never installed, so the residents relied on the mall’s public restrooms.

The result was comfortable enough for overnight stays, but it was not a legal apartment. It had no approved plumbing, lease, inspection or authorization from the property owners. The contrast was part of what made it so remarkable: a carefully furnished private room was operating inside one of the city’s busiest commercial buildings without the mall’s official knowledge.

Life Inside Was More Organized Than It Appeared

Headlines often describe the artists as having lived inside the mall for four straight years. The reality was more complicated.

The apartment existed from 2003 until 2007, but the eight participants used it on and off. They slept there, occasionally stayed for extended stretches and treated the room as a private retreat. Contemporary reports said members sometimes remained inside for periods of up to approximately three weeks.

It also functioned as a clubhouse and planning space.

Members of the group were involved in public art, hospital projects and temporary tape installations. Townsend was simultaneously working on an extensive memorial project that created life-size tape portraits connected to firefighters and airline passengers who died in the September 11 attacks.

According to Townsend’s own account, the hidden room offered a place to rest during several years of emotionally demanding work. He later described it not simply as an art installation, but as a home, an escape and an oasis.

The group documented the apartment with a small digital camera. At the time, social media had not yet turned every private experiment into immediate public content. The artists did not post daily updates or invite online audiences to follow their progress.

They filmed the furniture being moved, the space being constructed and ordinary moments inside the apartment. Much of that material remained unseen on computer drives for years, preserving a rare visual record of how the project developed.

Their secrecy was strict. The fewer outsiders who knew about the room, the less likely someone would accidentally expose it.

For years, that strategy worked.

Small Warning Signs Appeared Before the Discovery

By 2007, the artists began noticing troubling changes inside the apartment.

Personal items and equipment reportedly disappeared, including photographs and a video-game console. The group suspected that someone else had entered the space. They could not be certain whether the visitor was a thief, an employee or someone connected to mall security.

The uncertainty changed how they used the apartment. Visits became more cautious, and members reportedly began avoiding certain hours because they feared the room was no longer completely unknown.

Despite those concerns, Townsend eventually brought a visiting artist from Hong Kong into the hidden apartment.

It violated one of the group’s most important precautions: do not introduce outsiders to the space.

While Townsend was showing the visitor around, he heard activity outside, including the sound of a security radio. Guards had reached the entrance. Contemporary accounts differ slightly in how the final confrontation unfolded, but security personnel discovered Townsend and the furnished room in September 2007.

The four-year experiment was over.

At the time, the artists had still been improving the apartment. They were considering wood flooring, a more complete kitchen and additional rooms. Townsend later said he was caught only days before the planned floor installation.

There had even been discussions about taking the project further. Townsend and fellow artist Colin Bliss considered living inside the mall continuously for a year, possibly finding jobs there and conducting their daily lives without leaving the complex.

Security arrived before that plan could begin.

Only One Member Faced the Public Consequences

Townsend was arrested after the apartment was discovered. He took responsibility and did not publicly identify the seven other participants at the time.

He initially faced a more serious accusation, but the case ultimately resulted in a misdemeanor trespassing charge. Townsend pleaded no contest and received six months of probation. He was also banned from Providence Place, initially for life.

Mall representatives downplayed the idea that the space was a legitimate apartment, describing it instead as an unauthorized area containing furniture and personal property.

Police officers who inspected the room acknowledged the effort required to construct it, while also emphasizing that Providence Place was private property and that the group had entered and altered the area without permission.

The other seven artists remained largely unidentified in early news coverage. The secrecy that had protected the apartment continued to protect most of its creators long after the project ended.

Security sealed the space, and the original furnishings were removed. What remained were photographs, grainy digital recordings and one of Rhode Island’s most persistent modern legends.

The Hidden Footage Eventually Became a Documentary

Filmmaker Jeremy Workman learned about the apartment years later after meeting Townsend through the art world. At first, the story sounded almost impossible.

Townsend, however, possessed hours of footage recorded by the group while they were secretly constructing and using the room.

Workman eventually brought all eight participants together for the documentary Secret Mall Apartment. The film identifies the group as Michael Townsend, Adriana Valdez-Young, Colin Bliss, Andrew Oesch, Greta Scheing, James Mercer, Emily Ustach and Jay Zehngebot.

Rather than treating the story only as a prank, the documentary examines the artists’ friendship, the destruction of creative spaces in Providence and the tension between commercial redevelopment and the communities already occupying a city.

The original camera footage gives viewers something the 2007 headlines could not provide: an extended look at the actual room, the furniture, the secret routes and the people who built it.

The documentary premiered in 2024 and received a wider theatrical release the following year. In an unexpected conclusion, it was eventually screened at Providence Place itself. Townsend returned to the mall nearly two decades after being removed from it, and his long-standing ban was reportedly lifted.

For four years, shoppers passed through Providence Place without realizing that a group of artists had created a private world inside its walls.

The apartment was never a normal residence, and it was never legally theirs. Yet it was far more elaborate than a temporary hiding place. It had walls, electricity, furniture, household objects and a community that repeatedly returned to it.

The most surprising part may not be that the artists were eventually caught.

It is that they managed to build, furnish and preserve the apartment for so long while thousands of people continued shopping just a short distance away.