On Someone Else’s Dime

From the Travel Vault Dept.: I was puzzled as hell to look back at a piece that ran in Metroland in 1999 trumpeting summer travel in Newport, Rhode Island. As one who counts coal miners among his forebears, I’ve never been interested in touring the manorial piles the robber barons built through exploiting both workers and natural resources. Then I remembered that this was when I was still writing for computer magazines, and that a company that made uninterruptible power supplies at the time gave me and my wife an all-expenses-paid trip to spend time at their nearby headquarters. I figured I’d squeeze a few nickels out of the trip and write the rah-rah piece below. Remember: It dates from 1999!

                                                                                         

AT THE HEIGHT OF TOURIST SEASON, with every hotel room taken and downtown traffic crawling slower than a walking pace, you can stroll along tiny Thames Street cheek to jowl with other travelers and still have a marvelous time. That’s because the street continues to buck the chain-store trendiness that has infected much of the rest of the city and sports an eccentric array of shops and restaurants. 

The Breakers and Nearby Obscenities

House of Scrimshaw is one of a few scrimshaw shops; look for teddy bears, pottery, candles, tea and herbs, books, more pottery, even antique clock restoration and a wild array of statuary (Aardvark Antiques). The Newport Fudgery and every kind of restaurant offer comestibles, all of which helps to offset the interlopers like Banana Republic and Starbucks. And, because the street parallels the harbor, you’ll find diving gear, fly fishing equipment, and lots and lots of boats.

Newport was founded in 1639 by folks who fled a colony in Portsmouth that had fled from England, and all of this fleeing was for religious reasons. Newport’s harbor proved profitable as Colonial merchants pursued the Triangle Trade: rum, molasses and slaves. These entrepreneurs were forced to flee in 1776, however, when the British occupied the island for the next three years. 

The city next gained prominence in post-bellum years as a retreat of the rich, culminating in the Bellevue Avenue mansions that remain a great tourist attraction. The Vanderbilts and Astors are pretty much gone, but several of the overblown houses they and their friends built are owned by the Preservation Society of Newport County, which runs them as museums.

Most famous, probably, is The Breakers, home to railroad magnate Cornelius Vanderbilt (grandson of “Commodore” Cornelius), who bought the property as a wooden shack in 1885 and had it reconstructed, seven years later, in the style of an Italian Renaissance palazzo, with 70 rooms each sporting different decor. Architect Richard Morris Hunt also designed Marble House for William K. Vanderbilt (another “Commodore” grandson), which was finished in 1892. It was said that $7 million of the $11 million it cost to build the place went for marble alone. Chateau-sur-Mer was built between 1851 and 1852 for the trade merchant William Shepard Wetmore, while The Elms was finished in 1901 as the summer home of Edward Julius Berwind, a Philadelphia-based coal tycoon. 

You’ll find these places on Bellevue Avenue, along with the privately owned Astors' Beechwood, onetime home of Caroline Astor, xenophobic creator of the “400,” her version of an American social register. Although I’ve shunned tours of many of the hours in personal protest against the exploitation of my West Virginia coal-mining forebears, I enjoyed a recent journey through the past at Beechwood, where a talented cast of actors treated my group as members of the 400, arrived the day before one of Mrs. Astor’s parties to check out the place. Because children never were allowed in the main portion of the house, my young daughter was recognized as royalty – only a princess would have the privilege of climbing the grand staircase.

Newport is big on sports. It was the home of the Americas Cup for many years, until Australia and, most recently, New Zealand wrested it away. Yacht racing has slowly given way to more extreme sports – ESPN used Newport as an “X-Games” site a couple of summers ago – and the International Tennis Hall of Fame has been in the Newport Casino since 1954. Not surprising, then, that you’ll find plenty of running and tennis and beach volleyball and the like throughout the area. 

But nothing beats the Cliff Walk. It’s a three-and-a-half mile stroll along the ocean’s edge, which means you’re grazing the front yards of many a rich fart’s mansion. The Breakers offers a gated entry to the Cliff Walk, but other estates aren’t quite so accommodating, and the owners have erected high (twelve feet!) fences and dumped boulders in the way, ignoring the right-of-way granted by Charles II and supported, more recently, by Rhode Island’s constitution, which gives people “rights of fishery and the privileges of the shore to which they have heretofore been entitled.” Much of it is in good shape, some remains to be refurbished, but all of it was improved in the late 1970s, thanks to efforts by the then-chairman of the Cliff Walk Committee, spouse-eliminator Claus von Bulow. 

The start of the walk, by Newport Beach, is a fine, lung-filling stroll by the cliffs. As you near the Breakers, you’ll see the four magnificent mansions that now comprise Salve Regina University: Ochre Point, Ochre Court, Cave Cliff, and Vineland, along the most gorgeous stretch of the walk. This also is where it starts to deteriorate a little; as you near The Studio, a cliffside artist’s aerie, you’ll find an ever rockier terrain that soon turns into quite a clamber. As one of the guidelines states: “If you are not comfortable walking along the top of a two-foot wide rock and cement wall with a 10-feet drop on one side, turn back.” Once you’re through that section, however, it’s an easy trek to the finish at East Bailey’s Beach (also known as Reject’s Beach, to contrast the ambiance with the exclusive Bailey’s Beach just up the coast). You’re also at the end of Bellevue, where you can grab a bus to go back downtown.

Speaking of Newport Beach, it’s a public area  on the isthmus that connects Newport with neighboring Middletown, alongside the Rhode Island Sound. We stayed at the Inn at Newport Beach (30 Wave Ave., Middletown) during a recent visit, an old-fashioned hotel with an excellent restaurant, although tempting seafood houses are within an easy walk and you’ve always got the Cliff Walk to walk it off. If the sand space fills up faster than you expected (the crowd thins out in early afternoon), look for the old-fashioned carousel nearby.

It’s a city that the rich never fully managed to make their own, and it’s reminiscent of Saratoga Springs in that respect. Enjoy your stroll through downtown, but keep in mind, as you see one Eddie Bauer store too many, that Thames Street is always near at hand.

– Metroland Magazine, 26 April 1999