Travel Reference
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it. Shops with hanging wooden signs out front lined the streets. They all had jauntily naut-
ical names like the Flying Ship and Shore Thing. The harbor was almost too picturesque,
with its crowds of white yachts and bare masts undulating beneath a sky in which gulls
danced and reeled. But all around the fringe of the downtown there were unsightly parking
lots, and a busy four-lane road, more freeway than city street, divided the waterfront from
the town. Spindly trees stood along it like scrawny afterthoughts. The city had also built a
little park, Perrott Park, but it was unkempt and full of graffiti. I had not encountered this
kind of neglect before. Most American towns are spotless, and this really surprised me,
especially considering the importance of tourism to Newport. I walked up Thames Street,
where some fine old sea captains' homes were fighting a losing battle with litter and dog
shit and the encroachment of gas stations and car transmission places. It was all very sad.
This was a place where the people didn't seem to care, or perhaps just didn't notice, how
shabby they had let things grow. It reminded me of London.
I drove out to Fort Adams State Park across the bay. From there Newport looked another
town altogether-a charming cutout of needle-shaped church spires and Victorian rooftops
protruding from a parkland of trees. The bay glittered in the sunshine and its scores of sail-
boats bobbed on the gentle waves. It was captivating. I drove on along the shore road, past
Brenton Point, and then down Bellevue Avenue, where the most fabulous summer homes
ever built line the road on both sides and spill over onto many of the streets beyond.
Betweenabout1890and1905,America'srichestfamilies—theVanderbilts,theAstors,the
Belmonts,dozensofotherstriedtooutdoeachotherbybuildingmagnificenthomes,which
they insisted on calling cottages, all along this half-mile strip of imposing cliffs. Most
were loosely modeled on French chateaux and filled with furniture, marble and tapestries
shipped at huge expense from Europe. Hostesses routinely spent $300,000 or more on en-
tertainment for a season that listed only six or eight weeks. For forty years or so this was
the world headquarters of conspicuous consumption.
Most of the houses are now run as museums. They charge an arm and a leg to get in and
in any case the lines outside most of them were enormous (this was the Columbus Day
weekend, remember). You can't see much from the street-the owners didn't want common
people staring at them as they sat on the lawn counting their money, so they put up dense
hedges and high walls-but I discovered quite by chance that the city had built an asphalt
footpath all along the cliffedge, from which Icould see the backs ofthe grander mansions,
as well as enjoy giddying views of the ocean breaking onto the rocks far below. I had the
path almost to myself and walked along it in a state of quiet amazement, with my mouth
open. I had never seen such a succession of vast houses, such an excess of architecture.
Every house looked like a cross between a wedding cake and a state capitol building. I
