Newport, Rhode Island

Magazine Antiques, April, 1995 by Wendell Garrett

Newport is built near the southern end of the island of Rhode Island, upon the western shore. Its site is a beautiful slope.... To most of the houses are attached small, and to a considerable number large, gardens, which diffuse a cheerful, sprightly aspect around them. The good houses, of which there is a considerable number, are scattered, and frequently illuminate spots which would be otherwise absolutely gloomy. A few of them may be styled handsome.... The harbor of Newport is deep and sufficiently capacious to admit any number of vessels of any size which will probably ever be assembled in one body.

From the late seventeenth until the late eighteenth century Newport was one of the leading ports in colonial America. The city's prosperity, largely achieved through maritime trade, stimulated the Rhode Island economy and led to the construction of handsome houses and fine public buildings that made Newport the rival of Boston in the mid-eighteenth century. However, it never fully recovered from the breakdown of trade patterns brought about by the American Revolution, and thereafter economic leadership in Rhode Island$shifted to Providence. By the middle of the nineteenth century new centers of industry had eclipsed Newport, and such noble edifices as the Redwood Library, Trinity Church, Touro Synagogue, and the formerly bustling docks were the only visible remains of the city's earlier and grander status.

On the other hand, Newport never lacked summer visitors. Throughout the eighteenth century they came to escape the oppressive heat and disease-carrying insects of their plantations in the South or the Caribbean. Writing in 1798 of his boyhood, Arthur Brown recalled that "the Climate of Rhode Island, often called the garden and the Montpelier of America, induced such numbers of wealthy persons from the southward to reside there in the summer, that it was ludicrously called the Carolina hospital." Large hotels were built in the 1840's, and the network of roads was expanded, providing economic incentives for land speculators and developers. Soon Newport was emerging as one of the leading American summer resorts. An influx from Boston and Cambridge, Massachusetts, included a number of noted intellectuals and artists. After the Civil War new houses were built in an eclectic range of styles - Italianate, French, and the stick style - in materials ranging from wood and brick to stucco and stone. Yet despite it all, Newport endured as a quiet place amid rural surroundings.

By the 1890's the face of Newport had changed. It was then the most popular summer destination in the country, and the great "cottages" for which the city is now known began to rise. The intellectuals had been supplanted by the newly rich, and the hotels were a memory. Notable architects catered to this social aristocracy by building opulent mansions for them, such as those pictured and discussed in this issue. These were richly ornate houses, which provided theatrical settings for lavish dinner parties, costume balls, and the other entertainments of fashionable society. European visitors sometimes commented that they had never known anything comparable to the luxury they found in Newport. The French writer Paul Bourget, for example, concluded that the "senseless prodigalities of high life" in Newport exemplified the American vigor that was responsible for the accumulation of huge fortunes and were therefore very much in keeping with the American character.