Providence

Dan Barry: PROVIDENCE, R.I. — The last full-time employee in the tallest building in Rhode Island has grown accustomed to the 26 stories of emptiness. He doesn't even hear the absence anymore — that silent roar of business not transacted.

"At first it was very weird," says Paul Almeida, the chief engineer and resident optimist for a 428-foot Art Deco skyscraper that has defined the Providence cityscape since 1928. "Then, all of a sudden, it was nothing."

Just another job. Single-handedly maintaining a skyscraper that once announced Providence as a Gotham of industry, but whose soaring hollowness today only nags at the city's sense of self-worth. Like a chastened Ozymandias, it whispers: Now…