A4 Architecture Blog
Newport Architecture Spotlight: Bois Dore and the Ballrooms of Newport
If there is one thing that the great houses of Newport were really built for, it is to throw a party. Sometimes it seems like the great “cottages” are really just ballrooms with (comparatively) small five and six-bedroom houses attached. Belcourt Castle (until the...
Newport Architecture Spotlight: Newport Casino
The firm of McKim Mead & White was certainly the most influential and prolific American architectural partnership of the late 19th century and early 20th century. Newport is the proud home of their very first project as the firm McKim Mead & White: the Newport...
Newport Spotlight: Return of Historic Tax Credits
Maintaining and restoring historic buildings is challenging, but it is often these structures that give character and form to beautiful communities like Newport. Thus, there is a strong societal and economic advantage for the government to help assure that these old...
Newport Historical Spotlight: Newport and the Future of Planning
While Newport has been dealing with winter blizzards, behind the scenes, forward progress has been occurring on various planning efforts which will hopefully have impacts on the physical design of Newport in this (and future) summers. After a long absence in the post...
Newport Architectural Spotlight: The Future of Planning
The new year is always a time when the real estate industry takes a step back to evaluate the progress it has made in the year past, anticipate the prospects for the year ahead, and open the opportunity for Newport future planning. It is no surprise that the main...
Newport Architecture Spotlight: A Second Gilded Age for Beechwood?
As most Newporters are well aware, the great mansions along Bellevue Avenue were primarily built during the Gilded Age. This was the period from about 1887 until the First World War, when some of the wealthiest and most powerful people in America were drawn to the...
A4 Project Spotlight: The Newport Arboretum
Newport is not only known for its concentration of great and important architecture. It is also a cemetery for landscape design and a treasure trove of rare and exotic trees. This is not surprising as the city has always been a port city connected to distant lands by...
Newport Architect Spotlight: Peabody & Stearns
Newport is fortunate to have had many of the most notable American architects of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries design buildings within the community. Peter Harrison, Richard Upjohn, Richard Morris Hunt, H.H. Richardson, Horace Trumbauer, and Stanford...
Newport Historical Spotlight: New Urbanism and Newport
For the last twenty years, there has been a growing planning movement called “New Urbanism.” This ideology advocates, according to NewUrbanism.org, the following principles: 1) Walkability, 2) Connectivity; 3) Diversity of uses; 4) Mixed (price) housing; 7) Quality...
Newport Historical Spotlight: Newport’s Irish Masons
We are now going through the first prolonged economic downturn marked by mass migration from parts of the world even more economically challenged. Since the city’s founding in 1639, Newport has seen numerous cycles of boom and bust and waves of migration that matched...
Newport Architecture Spotlight: Belcourt Castle
Newport is filled with wonderful buildings in widely differing styles, created at different times and for different purposes. Some, like the Newport Casino, are associated with summer fun. Others, like Belcourt Castle, have become equally famous for the Halloween...
Newport Spotlight: Newport – The Museum of Architecture
Newport might rightfully be considered the "Metropolitan Museum of American Architecture," in that it is the repository of some of the most important works by some of this country's most important architects. Furthermore, it has the distinction of having a good many...
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A4 Perspective: The Changing Waterfront
In the Colonial Era, Newport’s waterfront served as the community’s front door and its lifeblood. There was no other way to reach Newport than by the Long Wharf that projected out into the Narragansett Bay, and which served as the entry point not just for arrivals to...
A4 Perspective: Air Conditioning
Around the world, the signs of global warming are becoming unmistakable. An arctic glacier is hanging on by the barest of margins. One third of Pakistan was flooded in the recent monsoons, and one heat wave after another has created a record amount of wildfires in the...
A4 Spotlight: 2022 Doris Duke Preservation Awards
Newport is rich with history and historic charm visible through many beautifully designed buildings and homes. Preservation and maintenance of these buildings has fallen to the people who presently inhabit the area. Newport’s culture and history has gone through many...
Newport Spotlight: 141 Pelham
Parkgate, located at 141 Pelham Street, was designed by Newport architect George Champlin Mason Sr. Sitting at the corner of Pelham and Bellevue, the site has a rich historical past. In 1844, the site was home to The Atlantic Hotel. During the Civil War, between 1861...
Newport Spotlight: Chepstow Mansion
In 1860 George Champlin Mason designed an Italianate villa in Newport, RI for Edmund Henry Schermerhorn, who was an American and part of the old New York families of Dutch descent. Today that house is known as Chepstow. It is among a series of houses designed by Mason...
Newport Spotlight: Belmont Chapel Renovation
The Belmont Chapel, located in Newport’s Island Cemetery, was built in 1886 by Mr. and Mrs. August Belmont, Sr., as a tribute to their beloved daughter Jane, who died at the age of nineteen. The Chapel was designed in the Gothic style by father-son architect duo...
Newport Spotlight: Captain Marin House
The Captain Marin House was originally acquired in 1843 by George Henry Calvert and wife, Elizabeth Steuart when they relocated from Maryland. The house was designed in the "Cottage Orné" Gothic Revival style, which was popular at that time. This style is marked by...
Newport Spotlight: Touro Synagogue
Newport is famous for many things and for many “firsts” as it was the fifth largest city in colonial America and a major and prosperous settlement before the Revolutionary War. Among the things that Newport takes great pride in for is being a place of tremendous...
A4 Guide: Newport Architectural Forum
Newport's architecture is some of the oldest and grandest in the country. From the Colonial Era, to early Victorian, to the Gilded Age, leading up to present times, Newport's small community has countless architectural marvels. There are more National Historic...
A4 Spotlight: National Tennis Club at the Newport Casino
In 1880, when the Newport Casino was designed by McKim Mead & White and built for James Gordon Bennett, the game of lawn tennis was very young. Major Walter Clopton Wingdale had been granted a patent for the game by Queen Victoria just a few years earlier in 1874...
A4 Spotlight: The Daniel Swinburne House
The Daniel Swinburne House is an extremely beautifully preserved Cottage Orné/Gothic Revival style house located in the “Catherine Kay” neighborhood of Newport. Originally built in 1863, the structure would have originally stood on a large parcel of land but as...
Newport Spotlight: Julian Fellowes
Winston Churchill famously stated, “First we shape our buildings and thereafter they shape us.” This keen observation was made in his argument before Parliament to properly restore the Parliament Building from the damage it sustained during the Second World War. He...