Thursday, March 22, 2007

Newport RI through the Years

I’ve entertained some of the East Coast readers with our adventures in the Last Frontier for awhile but now its time to give the West Coast and especially the Alaska readers that say…”yea great another snowy mountain or eagle picture” a chance to see some of our East Coast adventure. One of our first stops was to Newport Rhode Island, and the main thing that sticks out there is the architecture.

Dating back 250 years or so when Rhode Island was nothing but farm land and Revolutionary War Era (We’ll start there instead of 350 years ago when the founding Fathers or Mother (Anne Hutchinson) of RI or as we call them now Fundamentalist Baptists broke off from Massachusetts and were hanging around RI), there where a lot of farms and grist mills such as the next photo. What makes this one unique is that General Prescott of the British Army was caught with his pants down (literally) and taken prisoner and later traded for a number of Colonial soldiers. Turns out ole Gen. Prescott couldn’t keep it in his pants and had been captured in a previous war with the French in a similar uncompromising position.






















The girl exaimes the Grist Mill at Prescott Farm























Moving on a 100 years. This is the house of an old ships captain, one of many that line the harbor. The distinguishing feature of these houses is the “widows peak” that adorn the tops of the houses. Here the wives would sit and watch for their husbands to come home from months or years at sea (or when in port come strolling home from the local tavern with rolling pin in hand).





Moving up a few centuries we jump into the Gilded years in Newport where the rich and famous built their summer houses. The likes of Vanderbilt, Rockefeller, and J.P. Morgan built posh six week out of the year abodes. This photo is of one such house, but instead of posting something like the Breakers or the Marble house this is a photo of Collinwood Mansion (sound familiar?) hint… where did Barnabas Collins from the 60s TV show “Dark Shadows” live?? Yup the house used on the show was Cary Mansion here in Newport.



3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Nice photos of Newport! Do you have any others of the Cary Mansion? I loved that show!
Jak

Cheeseburger In Paradise said...

sorry thats the only one

Ishmael said...

I have a friend, who as a child, was a paperboy and delivered to the Dark Shadows mansion. He said it wasn't as creepy in person as on TV.

I vaguely remember many details of the show.... I wonder if they have the first year on Netflix?