Mission creep?
The Chinese Tea House at Marble House, in Newport, modeled on 12th Century Chinese Song Dynasty temples.
— Photo by Ekem
From Robert Whitcomb’s “Digital Diary,’’ in GoLocal24.com
That the Preservation Society of Newport County runs restaurants at its Breakers Welcome Center and the Chinese Tea House at Marble House and has made some other changes to sex up tourism at the city’s famous mansions continues to rankle some Newporters, who noted that it’s the Preservation Society, not the development society.
I was down in Newport on a lovely day the other week, and it was hopping with people on tours and some just wandering around looking dazed. Compared to, say, New York City, I saw few people wearing masks.
It’s too bad that Route 114, a main drag through Portsmouth and Middletown heading to Newport, is one of the uglier commercial strips in America and yet so close to beautiful natural and manmade sites. One wonders what sort of dubious zoners’ and politicians’ wheeling-dealing went into allowing such a long and depressing stretch.
Planting many more trees along the way would help camouflage some of its horrors. And maybe as the World Wide Web continues to kill brick-and- mortar stores, some of the land can be allowed to revert to open space and housing. The road is a real downer for those expecting beauty to and from The City by the Sea.
At The Breakers, more revenue, no more porta potties
The Great Hall of The Breakers.
Adapted from Robert Whitcomb’s “Digital Diary,’’ in GoLocal24.com
The Preservation Society of Newport County has told me that for the six months July to December (month-to-date) this year the new Welcome Center at The Breakers mansion has brought the society $350,000 more than it got in the year-earlier period at The Breakers. Back then, the center hadn’t yet opened and only memberships and tickets were for sale. The Welcome Center sells beverages and light meals. The society said that was a 10 percent increase in revenue for the society at The Breakers.
Of course, the Welcome Center aroused much neighborhood opposition, which delayed it for years. Foes were divided between those who didn’t want the new facility at all and those who wanted it, if it had to be built, across the street from The Breakers, the most famous Newport mansion.
In any case, good riddance to the port-a-potties that had served as the rest rooms for the public at The Breakers!
Tough town, Newport
The Breakers, in Newport.
From Robert Whitcomb’s “Digital Diary,’’ in GoLocal24.com
I’ve been chatting with Newporters a bit more than usual lately. It’s an exciting and complicated, sometimes bizarre place, with great natural and manmade beauty. But the routes to get there are problematical. The Route 114 commercial strip in Middletown to the Newport city line is one of the ugliest I’ve seen – where were the town planners and zoners? -- and there often seems to be an accident or other problem on the Pell Bridge, a toll span. If only there was much more ferry service between Providence and Newport to reduce some of the congestion.
And society, especially “high society,’’ while often entertaining, can be quite vehement. Consider the Preservation Society of Newport’s successful multi-year campaign to build a “welcome center,’’ with restaurant, on the grounds of The Breakers, the Vanderbilts’ former over-the-top seaside mansion on Ochre Point Avenue, close to famed Bellevue Avenue. Some powerful Newporters argued that if such an “amenity’’ were to be built at all it should have been across the street. What ensued was a upscale civil war with neighbors; some of the protagonists still don’t speak to each other.
Some Newporters fear that the Preservation Society might try to put restaurants in some of its other properties, too, in effect turning into a restaurant chain, which would displease some neighbors (street-parking paranoia) as well as for-profit eateries in town that might be hard-pressed to compete with the powerful nonprofit.
Anyway, the city could use a Truman Capote, Edith Wharton, Gore Vidal or Tom Wolfe to do an updated zoological study of the Bellevue Drive/Ocean Drive swells, which include such nouveau riches as Larry Ellison, Jay Leno and Judge Judy as well as “old money,’’ some of which can be traced back to crooks in the 19th Century Gilded Age.
(The old response, attributed to various recipients of charitable donations over the years, about “tainted money’’ was that the only problem was that ‘’taint enough of it’’.)
There’s something about the mix of deep history, commercial and recreational port, aesthetics, social drama and intrigue, a rich stew of ethnicities, Navy, ex-spies and other government types and location at the southern end of an island that keeps new people coming to rejuvenate the place.