Context

The immediate context for the Russian Sub Museum is Collier Point Park. Built in 1996 and owned by the parent conglomerate of Narragansett Electric, it was a simple, bare six-acre park until the Saratoga Museum Foundation leased the land for the submarine. Everything except the sub and the trailer offices for the museum were there from 1996; its suitability for the project was not plan, but luck.

The park area was once a commercial dock that received coal to power two nearby electric plants: South Street Station, whose origins began with the first Providence streetlamps in the 19th century; and Manchester Street Station, which was built to electrify the trolley system in 1895. Defunct coal-moving apparatus still sit on the park's waterfront. The park was named after the "collier ship," which was once a common sight in the harbor.

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