| Thirty
miles south of Providence, Newport stands at the southern tip of
the largest island in Narragansett Bay, Aquidneck
Island . It was established as a colony by William Coddington of
Providence in 1639. Due to its excellent harbor, it grew rapidly
as a port for
the triangle trade and as a privateering center. Religious tolerance
led to an influx of Jews, Quakers and Baptists who formed lucrative
international trade links, but this great prosperity was severely
knocked back by the British occupation of 1776-79, when half the
population
fled and much of the town was burned down. Fortunately, enough
of its original eighteenth-century homes have survived for Newport
to rival
Boston in this respect.
In
the 1850s the town became fashionable again as a resort for
wealthy Southern merchants, and very soon nouveau riche industrialists
such as the Astors, Belmonts and Vanderbilts were building " summer
cottages " - better described as mansions - along the
rocky coastline. The obscene ostentation of this era, now known
by
Mark Twain's disparaging phrase as the Gilded Age , shocked
Massachusetts' old wealth to the core. Hostels in Newport |
ROOMS USA
