A4 Architecture Blog

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...

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...

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...

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...

The Muenchinger-King Building, like many Newport Buildings, has had a long and winding history. The oldest part of the building was constructed in 1837 for a South Carolina planter named Hugh Swinton Ball. This was the period when many southern landowners summered in...

Architecture is not just a three-dimensional art form like sculpture but actually multi-dimensional. If you think of the sound quality of a church, the tactical quality of touching a cool marble surface in a building, or the smell of freshly cut cedar shingles on a...

Ⓒ Nick Mele Newport has long been considered a summer resort destination since before the time of the American Revolution. Its easy accessibility to the sea and lovely climate made it an ideal place for the well-to-do to escape the heat of summer in times before the...

Samuel Tilton House (McKim, Mead and White, 1881) Each semester I am invited to teach a class in the "Circle of Scholars" continuing education program at Salve Regina University, located here in Newport Rhode Island. This is a program that Salve created to allow...

In the 1870’s the United States was undergoing a massive change. The country was expanding westward following the completion of the Civil War and the economy was booming as a result. This in turn lead to the creation of massive industrial fortunes. In urban centers...

When A4 Architecture began the design process for the first flagship store for Gill Marine North America, our challenge was to try to capture both the innovation of the company’s technologic approach to apparel but also the longstanding tradition of yachting which...

Rhode Island is perhaps most noted for being geographically the smallest state in the union. It is 1214 square miles (sm) in size with 1055 sm of land and 169 sm of water. The state has over 400 miles of coastline and thereby earns its nickname “The Ocean State” for...