Laborare est orare

Newport preservation question du jour: Why has the Belmont Chapel at Island Cemetery been allowed to slip into such an appalling state of decay? Commissioned by famed 19th century financier August Belmont in memory of his daughter, and donated by him in 1886 to the trustees of Island Cemetery for use as a "public mortuary chapel", this red sandstone structure was built by George Champlin Mason, Sr., and later renovated by Richard Morris Hunt. It is surrounded by monuments created by important 19th century architects and artists such as Augustus Saint Gaudens, John LaFarge, Karl Bitter and Hunt. Elaborate memorials to Newport's social elite surround the building, clamouring for attention. In fact Hunt's own grave lies nearby, a flat granite slab inscribed "laborare est orare" (work is prayer).

If only it were so. In reality this work by Mason & Hunt is crumbling faster than a toddler's sandcastle on a rainy beach. Terra cotta relief tiles lie smashed on the floor. Polychrome flooring has been prised out of its setting. Furnishings & fixtures have long since been stripped away. The roof is partially collapsed and reveals wide blue patches of open sky, and birds fly in and out and leave droppings everywhere. A thick blanket of vines & weeds is seemingly all that holds the ediface together. The chapel is no longer a memorial to anything beyond the power of time to erase all things and to undermine our best efforts, even those of the very wealthy. Belmont's gift to us of a "public mortuary chapel" may well be beyond all saving. I suggest you hurry over there to check it out before it's totally gone.

An existential moment in Newport

One of the best things about living in Newport is the way history seeps out of the sidewalks, usually when you least expect it. Ghosts are everywhere...

Yesterday morning I took my dog Gwen for a walk. We were headed to Island Cemetery to check out the gravestone of Richard Morris Hunt, the architect of Wrentham House, which I'd just been to see a couple of days before & which had blown me away.




Anyhow, on the way we passed some guys from the Department of Public Works replacing a stretch of pavement. Naturally Gwen dragged me over so she could sniff out the excavation trench, and there, right smack at the bottom of it, were the broken but clearly recognizable remains of a colonial clay tobacco pipe, just lying there in the dirt for all to see. The sight immediately unmoored me from my normal reality. Who'd dropped it? When? What was their life like? What IS time?

How very odd, that they were there & now they were gone & I was there instead...and someday it will be my turn to be gone, and someone else will be standing on this street corner, scratching THEIR head over this same existential riddle. Because no matter how I sliced it, there was no denying the fact that there at my feet lay a small clay pipe - proof that time exists, reality exists, that life and death are unutterably & irrevocably real. Really real. Almost every second of every day we allow ourselves to forget that.

Overhead fluffy white clouds slipped unconcernedly and implacably by. So what else could I do? I walked on, to the cemetery.