Time-travel in Newport

Visitors to Newport always think it's going to be SOOOO expensive...Well, it isn't - or at least, it doesn't have to be. There are plenty of great ways to enjoy Newport with little or no money, and actually, many of them are the best ways to experience Newport, period.

My personal favorite is the Cliff Walk. Put on your sneakers, pack a sandwich & a bottle of water- if it's a really nice day, maybe even put on a bathing suit - and head over to the Chanler Hotel overlooking First Beach, which is where the famed 3.5 mile National Recreation Trail begins.

This scenic walk manages to incorporate the best of just about everything Newport has to offer. A rugged windswept coastline - lined with magenta wild beach roses - strewn with giant smooth boulders, perfect for lying back on and sunning - crashing waves - glorious world-famous 19th century "cottages" - impossibly manicured lawns - the empty heaving brightness of the Atlantic Ocean - and above it all, the seagulls, soaring and cawing over the heads of rich and poor alike. It's a place where past & present fuse...a place where for 150 years, people have been travelling just this path, for just these reasons, and now you too are one of them.

Historic Newport

It always irks me that visitors to Newport - locals too, for that matter - put so much emphasis on the mansions, and focus so little on what really makes Newport special - the spectacular richness of its everyday historic properties.

Probably the single most little-known fact about Newport is that it contains more intact colonial architectural fabric than any city in the country. That's right - in the entire country! More than "Colonial" Williamsburg...more than Boston...more than Savannah, or Salem, or Plymouth, or any other historic city you can name

Newport's streets are lined with literally hundreds and hundreds of historic structures, from private vernacular-style residences to notable public buildings to nationally-known architect-designed buildings from the 18th, 19th & 20th centuries. Not only that, they're still in use, these houses are still alive, not just living on as museum sets or recreations. Scholars from all over the world come to Newport because there is such an abundance of significant early American material still here, in everyday use, material embedded into our every neighborhood and streetscape, the same neighborhoods & streetscapes we drive through evey day and routinely ignore.

If you live around here, authentic 18th century buildings start to seem like they're a dime a dozen, ho hum, and building restrictions & guidelines imposed by the Historic Commission are nothing more than an annoying impediment to getting things done. Few of us ever stop to consider the uniqueness of the almost unbelievable historical authenticity that underlies the facades surrounding us. Does anyone even know or care that Newport is currently seeking inclusion in the list of World Heritage sites? I doubt it. All I ever hear anyone talk about are the mansions...