Photogenic to Photodocumentary: The Redwood Collects Vintage Newport Images

by Paul Miller

At or about 4pm on the afternoon of November 25, 1892, two events occurred almost simultaneously at Cornelius Vanderbilt II’s Peabody & Stearns-designed summer residence “The Breakers” in Newport. While Mr. and Mrs. Edward R. Wharton (“Teddy” and Edith) payed a social call to Mr. Vanderbilt a fire started beneath the villa’s three-story center hall in a defective heating apparatus. With a strong northeast wind, the winter weather was pronounced that week, and for that reason the fires within the house had been kept going. It is surmised that the flues were too small and the basement furnace could not withstand the strain. By 4:15pm servants in the vicinity of the billiard and dining rooms detected smoke and ran from the northeast corner of the house, across the center hall, to the music room to alert Mr. Vanderbilt. Leaving the Whartons, he stepped into the hall to investigate and saw a tongue of flame through a crack in the walnut paneling. The alarm was sounded and male servants armed themselves with fire extinguishers. Flames came from all directions and forced them back. The Whartons, Mrs. Vanderbilt and the four children then at home withdrew to the gardener’s lodge. Aided by the staff, Mr. and Mrs. Vanderbilt made an effort to save a few personal effects but were quickly fortunate to just escape alive. Later that evening, Cornelius Vanderbilt regretted to the press that “not a thing was saved”.

These details are dramatically retold on the front page of The New York Times and other leading American newspapers the following day. They allow for a relatively accurate reconstruction of events. But to form a visual reconstruction in the absence of newsreels, the modern researcher has but to consult the visual record preserved in the cache of period photographs recently purchased by the Redwood that formerly belonged to Leonard and Monique Panaggio, the Preservation Society, and the Newport Redevelopment Authority. Here one finds a series of rare circa 1890 interior views of The Breakers I as it was just before the fire and the visual evidence is revealing. Looking closely at the furnishings of the ground floor rooms, it becomes apparent that the flames must have shot through the great center hall travelling north to south on the east or ocean-side of the house. For indeed no furnishings, accessories or textiles in the dining room, the billiard room, the morning room or the music room are recognizable as having been saved from the flames and reutilized by the family. On the other hand, a surprising number of items from the front (west side) of the house appear to have escaped the fire and been reused in the masonry for The Breakers II built from 1893 to 1895 by Richard Morris Hunt.

It appears from the record provided by these images that Mr. Vanderbilt and his staff worked with very limited time on a salvage operation, entering and exiting from the west side front door while the east-facing side of the house was aflame. This becomes apparent from the number of pieces extricated from the west-facing library and breakfast room. Interestingly, the original ground floor plan was reprised in the new Breakers. From the breakfast room (Fig. 1) came an Empire style circular dining table and a child’s highchair; from the library (Fig. 2) came two large velvet-upholstered high-back French armchairs, a rattan corner chair, a button-tufted velvet side chair and a Renaissance metallic strapwork-backed side chair. All of these salvaged pieces are recorded as reappearing in the inventory of The Breakers II as it opened in August 1895 and where they remain today. Thanks to the visual evidence of these archival views, the narrative of The Breakers fire can be re-interpreted anew.

This example of visual decoding underscores the historical importance of preserving photographic collections, the density of which enable scholars to reconstruct the past in exceptional detail.

Hence the import of the Redwood’s recent acquisition, a collection comprising 355 archival photographs of Newport spanning the 1870s to the 1970s. Ranging from stereoscopes views of early Newport cottages, to city streetscapes, parades, festivals, aerial views and urban renewal projects, these additional images will round out the comprehensive nature of the Library’s photography collection.

A particular and unduplicated strength of the collection is the series of photographs that traces the 1965-1969 urban renewal campaign from Long Wharf to Market Square. As generations pass, the memory of Newport’s waterfront prior to 1970 is fast receding. Such once evocative names as Government Landing and Market Square, the Torpedo Station or the Blue Moon—formerly Newport’s legendary hubs of transit, employment and nightlife— mean little to generations born after 1970. Indeed, the 1960s witnessed the most extensive transformation of Newport’s physical environment in the city’s 384-year history. Vintage views of the city allow us to consider the gradual evolution of the built landscape in architectural, sociological and economic terms. They also hint at the complex layering and overlapping of historical periods in now vanished neighborhoods. Even if this layering survives only in photos, evidence abounds regarding what might lie beneath the surface for future archaeologists.

Future researchers attempting to locate Market square, the ferry or government landings, or any of a variety of commercial wharves, streets, homes and businesses will find ample visual evidence in this unique facet of the collection—just one chapter of many in the Redwood’s newly enhanced and growing photography archive.

Take, for instance a February, 1965 view of the demolition of the Torpedo Station on Goat Island (Fig. 3); what was once a densely built concentration of buildings from the eighteenth through midtwentieth centuries—for long a highly industrialized site that functioned as the biggest employer in the State of Rhode Island— is for us today a contemporary resort serving both residential and yachting communities. Unbeknownst to most Newporters and visitors, beneath the surface lies layers of Colonial, Victorian and twentieth-century history, the knowledge of which is available largely through the evidence of these old images.

In a December 1966 image of the demolition of the old Boston Store on Thames Street (Fig. 4), we look east through the first hole made in the urban fabric along the west side of the street at its juncture with Market Square. North of Bowen’s Wharf, this block formerly was the transit center for naval personnel and civilian workers commuting via Government landing ferries to Fort Adams, the Training Station and the Torpedo Station. Likewise, to the immediate south, most visitors to Newport arriving via the Jamestown ferry landed at Market Square, also home to the Newport Police Department. Further north, at the foot of Washington Square, stood a series of dilapidated Colonial houses converted via multiple additions into shops and bars. The most notorious of the latter was the now legendary Blue Moon that we see reduced to rubble in a November, 1966 photo (Fig. 5). In the immediate north-facing background, the mid-nineteenth-century brick mill that housed the Newport Water Works would also soon make way for a parking lot fronting Marlborough Street.

Future researchers attempting to locate Market Square, the ferry or government landings, or any of a variety of commercial wharves, streets, homes and businesses will find ample visual evidence in this unique facet of the collection—just one chapter of many in the Redwood’s newly enhanced and growing photography archive.

Paul Miller is active for over three decades in multiple newport restoration and preservation projects, Paul F. Miller is Curator emeritus of the Preservation society of newport County and currently serves as Director of the Clouds Hill House Museum in Warwick, RI.