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Abstract

Between 1830 and 1860, Newport became a favored summer haunt for moderately wealthy southerners, Bostonians, New Yorkers, and Philadelphians. Staying at first in boarding houses and hotels, and later in summerhouses termed “cottages,” these summer residents transformed the city from a sleepy, post-Revolutionary ruin into one of the leading resorts in America. The post-Civil War Gilded Age brought with it the “New York invasion” of unbridled wealth and aristocratic ambition, eclipsing this earlier summer society in the popular mind and replacing many of its cottages with palatial mansions. Eliza Cope Harrison and Rosemary F. Carroll return to antebellum Newport in an article drawing on previously unpublished manuscript collections and early newspaper accounts. The topic of Newport’s lost past was the theme of an exhibition organized recently by Paul F. Miller, Curator of the Preservation Society of Newport County. Shown at The Elms in the summer and fall of 2005, Lost Houses of Newport spanned the history of the city, using images and text to document dozens of vanished residences. In two installments, beginning with this issue of the journal, Mr. Miller translates Lost Houses of Newport to the printed page.

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