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Thirty miles south of Providence, NEWPORT
stands at the southern tip of the largest island in Narragansett
Bay, Aquidneck Island . It was established as
a colony by William Coddington of Providence in 1639. Due to its
excellent harbor, it grew rapidly as a port for the triangle trade
and as a privateering center. Religious tolerance
led to an influx of Jews, Quakers and Baptists who formed lucrative
international trade links, but this great prosperity was severely
knocked back by the British occupation of 1779,
when half the population fled and much of the town was burned
down. Fortunately, enough of its original eighteenth-century homes
have survived for Newport to rival Boston in this respect.
In the 1850s the town became fashionable again as
a resort for wealthy Southern merchants, and very soon nouveau
riche industrialists such as the Astors, Belmonts and Vanderbilts
were building " summer cottages " better
described as mansions along the rocky coastline. The ostentation
of this era, now known by Mark Twain's disparaging phrase as the
Gilded Age , shocked Massachusetts' old wealth
to the core.
Depression killed off the decadence, but Newport
kept going as a naval town until the 1970s. Today the town feeds
off tourism; much of it caters to the tennis and yachting set,
but there are as many people looking at and envying the wealth
as enjoying it. Though sanitized by the new America's
Cup Avenue , which replaced the sea-salt rawness of the
waterfront with bars and boutiques, the rough old port still rears
its head, with beer and R&B clubs as evident as cocktails
and cruises, making it an essential stop, especially during the
summer festival season .
