It was built during World War II and financed by the Maritime Commission as part of the country's Emergency Shipbuilding Program.

The shipyard construction swallowed the popular Kerwin's Beach, which drew thousands to the shores of the Providence River before it was covered over.

Although 1 million square yards (840,000 m2) of fill from a nearby hillside was dumped onto the mud flats, this still failed to stabilize the area.

[1] On September 1, 1945, Secretary of the Navy James Forrestal wrote to T. J. Walsh, the head of the company, praising the work of the local yard and saying that it was preeminent in building the great arsenal that helped save the world.

[1] In October 1945, it was reported that the Maritime Commission agreed to sell the property to the City of Providence for approximately $308,000.

[5] In the late 1970s, there were plans to construct a cargo container port at the site, but efforts fell through and two cranes are all that remained.

[1] Most of the Colony-class frigate names corresponded to an island or archipelago—such as Anguilla, Antigua, Ascension, and so forth—that was (in the era built) a Crown colony or British protectorate.

A July 1945 newspaper report stated that the Walsh-Kaiser Company had named each of its Artemis-class attack cargo ship after stars.