A4 Architecture Blog
Newport Architecture Spotlight: Early Newport Settlement Architecture
A residential example of architectural style of the early Newport settlement is Wanton-Lyman-Hazard House. Built in 1697. The residential Wanton-Lyman-Hazard House was an Early Settlement style residence that exemplified these characteristics: saltbox/New England...
Newport Architecture Spotlight: The Redwood Library – Temple of American Enlightenment
The Redwood Library is the nation’s oldest circulating library still in its original building. It was a product of the Philosophical Club, a group of local 18th-century businessmen who gathered around the famous Bishop Berkeley, a colonial-era religious leader, and...
Newport Architecture Spotlight: Newport’s Lost Grand Hotels
Newport hotels seems to be in the midst of a building boom, with three new hotel proposals before various boards and commissions at the time this article is being written. Newport’s reputation as a Gilded Age resort is renowned, and the Newport name has come to embody...
A4 Spotlight: 2017 Doris Duke Preservation Awards
Eleven years ago, the Doris Duke Preservation Awards were established under the auspices of the Newport Restoration Foundation (NRF) and the city of Newport to review, evaluate and honor those projects in the community that best represent the preservation movement. It...
Newport Architecture Spotlight: Mid-Georgian Architecture
A residential example of Mid-Georgian architecture in Newport, RI is Hunter House, built in 1748. The Hunter House is a pristine example of Mid-Georgian architecture in Newport. Some iconic Mid-Georgian features of this residence include: The pineapple detail above...
Newport Architecture Spotlight: Belcourt of Newport
For the majority of the great houses designed and built along Bellevue Avenue, the carriage house and stables were usually located a distance from the main house. Even at the Elms, with its high-style carriage house design, in the same style as the main house, the...
Newport Architecture Spotlight: Newport Casino – A Tennis Centerpiece
Newport has many notable buildings, but one of the most widely recognizable buildings in the city is the Newport Casino, home to the International Tennis Hall of Fame. The Casino is really a complex of buildings that are masterpieces of the “Shingle Style” popular...
A4 Spotlight: World Heritage Site – Newport
Once again, Newport is hoping to become a World Heritage site. This column has often argued that Newport is blessed with a broad and deep cultural and architectural heritage. From the city’s rich concentration of colonial houses along Spring Street and in the Point...
Newport Architecture Spotlight: A Mysterious Monument in Newport
Newport is home to an extraordinary number of architectural treasures. For the most part, the architects, owners, and dates of construction for these buildings are well documented. In one case, however, the dates and history of the structure are very much in...
Newport Architecture Spotlight: Public Spaces of Newport
When most people think about the idea of “Public Spaces” in Newport, they will often immediately think of parks and public squares. While parks like Touro Park, Queen Anne Square, and Washington Square serve an important role as visual punctuation to the buildings,...
Newport Architecture Spotlight: A Mysterious Monument – The Newport Tower
Newport is home to an extraordinary number of architectural treasures. For the most part the architects, owners and dates of construction for these buildings are well documented. In one case, however, the dates and history of the structure are very much in contention...
Newport Architecture Spotlight: Newport Spring
In 1639, looking for a new place to form a new community, a small group of colonial settlers found what they were looking for: a deep water harbor with a freshwater spring nearby. The colonial charter readers: “It is agreed and ordered that the Plantation began at...
Newport Spotlight: Architectural Symposium: Horace Trumbauer
There are many great architects who worked in Newport over its long and illustrious history. Richard Morris Hunt, Stanford White, and Peter Harrison are all names that have become familiar to those that read the “Archi-Text” column regularly. A somewhat less familiar...
A4 Guide: LEED Certification and Sustainable Design
As energy prices continue to rise and concerns about “global warming” and “carbon footprints” become more widespread, the building industry is beginning to change to address these new concerns. We are currently at the leading edge of the “green building” phenomenon —...
Maya Lin and the Challenge of Creating Public Art
In 1981, when the judges of the Vietnam Memorial competition opened the envelope on the back of the winning entry board, they found the name “Maya Lin” and the address of a Yale dormitory where the young woman lived as an undergraduate student. From among more than...
A4 Spotlight: Preserve Rhode Island Awards
On October 21st, the second annual “Rhody” Awards were presented jointly by Preserve Rhode Island, The RI Historical Preservation, and the Heritage Commission, and Newport County was featured prominently — both in what projects were awarded and where the awards were...
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A4 Spotlight: Beachmound Renovation
Newport, Rhode Island is famous for its grand mansions. There were large houses built during the Colonial Era and the time between the Revolutionary War and the Civil War, but it was during the Gilded Age which lasted from 1865 to 1915 that the largest number and...
Newport Spotlight: Rose Island Lighthouse
Rose Island Aerial - Image by PJ Dougherty There is one kind of building type that is only found along the coastlines of the world: the lighthouse. From the earliest days when the great lighthouse at Alexandria was considered one of the great wonders of the...
A4 Spotlight: Ochre Court
Salve Regina University is celebrating its 75th Anniversary in 2022. Although plans by the Sisters of Mercy were set in place many years before, in 1947 the nuns received the gift of Ochre Court from the Goelet family. The building was originally designed by Richard...
A4 Spotlight: George Champlin Mason Jr. House
Amongst the many historic structures that populate Newport's rich architectural landscape, one name appears again and again: George Champlin Mason. From 1860 until the mid 1890s, George Champlin Mason Sr. and his son of the same name designed more than 150 notable...
Newport Spotlight: Redwood Library
Among the many firsts that Newport, Rhode Island is famous for and proud of is the Redwood Library, the oldest continuously operating purpose-built library in America. Through it's construction and expansion over time, the building has been an icon of both the history...
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...