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Newport By Nancy and Richard Woodworth For the visitor, there are perhaps five Newports. One is the harborfront, the busy commercial and entertainment area along the wharves and Thames Street. This is the heart of Newport, the place from which the Tall Ships and America's Cup winners sailed, the area to which the tourists gravitate. Another Newport is a world apart. It's up on fabled Bellevue Avenue among the mansions from the Gilded Age. Here the Astors, Vanderbilts, Morgans and others of America's 400 built their summer "cottages," palatial showplaces designed by the nation's leading architects. Here near the Casino at the turn of the century was a society summer resort unrivaled for glitter and opulence. A third Newport is its quaint Point and Historic Hill sections, which date back to the 17th and 18th centuries when Newport was an early maritime center. Here are located more Colonial houses than any other place in the country, and some of the oldest public and religious edifices as well. A fourth Newport is the windswept, open land around Ocean Drive, where the surf crashes against the rocky shore amid latter-day mansions and contemporary showplaces. This is the New England version of California's Pebble Beach and Seventeen-Mile Drive. And then there's the rest of Newport, a bustling, Navy-dominated city that sprawls south along Aquidneck Island, away from the ocean and the other Newports. Join these diverse Newports as history and geography have. The result is New England's international resort, a wondrous mix of water and wealth, of architecture and history, of romance and entertainment. You can concentrate on one Newport and have more than enough to see
and do, or try to savor a bit of them all. But likely as not, you won't
get your fill. Newport will merely whet your appetite, its powerful
allure beckoning you back. Material excerpted from Inn Spots & Special Places in New England, by Nancy and Richard Woodworth. Copyright 2004.
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