Ocean Drive Historic District

	Ocean Drive Historic District
	U.S. National Register of Historic Places
	U.S. National Historic Landmark District
	View of Castle Hill Light, located at the end of the Ocean Drive
Location	Newport, RI
Coordinates	41°27′18″N71°19′57″W / 41.45500°N 71.33250°W Coordinates: 41°27′18″N71°19′57″W / 41.45500°N 71.33250°W
Area	1,509 acres (611 ha)
Built	Late 18th-20th century
Architectural style	Late Victorian, early 20th-century revival styles
NRHP reference #	76000048
Significant dates
Added to NRHP	May 11, 1976 [1]
Designated NHLD	May 11, 1976 [2]

Last updated April 28, 2019

The Ocean Drive Historic District is a historic district that covers the long street of the same name along the southern shore of Newport, Rhode Island, United States. It was designated a National Historic Landmark District in 1976, in recognition for its distinctive landscape (in part the work of Frederick Law Olmsted) and architecture, which is less formal and generally not as ostentatious as the grand summer properties of Bellevue Avenue.

Historic districts in the United States are designated historic districts recognizing a group of buildings, properties, or sites by one of several entities on different levels as historically or architecturally significant. Buildings, structures, objects and sites within a historic district are normally divided into two categories, contributing and non-contributing. Districts greatly vary in size: some have hundreds of structures, while others have just a few.

Newport is a seaside city on Aquidneck Island in Newport County, Rhode Island, located approximately 33 miles (53 km) southeast of Providence, Rhode Island, 20 miles (32 km) south of Fall River, Massachusetts, 73 miles (117 km) south of Boston, and 180 miles (290 km) northeast of New York City. It is known as a New England summer resort and is famous for its historic mansions and its rich sailing history. It was the location of the first U.S. Open tournaments in both tennis and golf, as well as every challenge to the America's Cup between 1930 and 1983. It is also the home of Salve Regina University and Naval Station Newport, which houses the United States Naval War College, the Naval Undersea Warfare Center, and an important Navy training center. It was a major 18th-century port city and also contains a high number of buildings from the Colonial era.

Rhode Island, officially the State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, is a state in the New England region of the United States. It is the smallest state in area, the seventh least populous, the second most densely populated, and it has the longest official name of any state. Rhode Island is bordered by Connecticut to the west, Massachusetts to the north and east, and the Atlantic Ocean to the south via Rhode Island Sound and Block Island Sound. It also shares a small maritime border with New York. Providence is the state capital and most populous city in Rhode Island.

Geography

Ocean Drive begins at an intersection with Ocean Avenue, a short distance from the southern terminus of Bellevue. It follows the shoreline closely in a roughly east–west direction, meandering as it does, to Brenton Point State Park on Aquidneck Island's southwestern corner, the only place it turns away from the shoreline. It then continues along the shore again, with views toward Conanicut Island, before it ends just south of Fort Adams.

Brenton Point State Park is a public recreation area occupying 89 acres (36 ha) at the southwestern tip of Aquidneck Island in the town of Newport, Rhode Island. The state park offers wide vistas of the Atlantic Ocean where it meets Narragansett Bay. The park lies adjacent to the Newport Country Club, part of Newport's Ocean Drive Historic District. It is managed by the Rhode Island Department of Environmental Management, Division of Parks and Recreation, and is overseen by the staff at nearby Fort Adams State Park.

Aquidneck Island island in the United States of America

Aquidneck Island, officially Rhode Island, is an island in Narragansett Bay and in the State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, which is partially named after the island. The total land area is 97.9 km² (37.8 sq mi), which makes it the largest island in the bay. The 2000 United States Census reported its population as 60,870.

Conanicut Island island in the United States of America

Conanicut Island is the second largest island in Narragansett Bay in the US state of Rhode Island. It is connected on the east by the Claiborne Pell Bridge to Newport on Aquidneck Island, and on the west by the Jamestown-Verrazano Bridge to North Kingstown on the mainland. The island comprises the town of Jamestown, Rhode Island. The United States Census Bureau reported a land area of 24.46 km² (9.44 sq mi) and a population of 5,622 as of the 2000 census.

The topography along the road consists mainly of dunes and low hills, on which houses were built in a variety of late 19th and 20th century styles. The hills are mostly open, with occasional patches of scrubby bush and copses of trees. Land use is almost exclusively residential. Of the 53 buildings within the district, the few commercial structures are the clubhouses of private beaches and associated outbuildings (one, Gooseberry Beach, is open to the public). Unlike Newport's other historic districts, none of them are separately listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

Topography is the study of the shape and features of land surfaces. The topography of an area could refer to the surface shapes and features themselves, or a description.

Land use involves the management and modification of natural environment or wilderness into built environment such as settlements and semi-natural habitats such as arable fields, pastures, and managed woods. It also has been defined as "the total of arrangements, activities, and inputs that people undertake in a certain land cover type."

Gooseberry Beach is a beach located in Newport, Rhode Island off Ocean Drive. It is a private beach, but also open to the public. The beach is located between Bailey's Beach and Hazard's Beach.

History

The Ocean Drive area was once farmland, distant from the center of town during the colonial era. The expansion of the city's development along Bellevue Avenue as the wealthy summer residents built grander and grander mansions eventually opened up the Ocean Drive area to development; however smaller houses were built due to the more rolling landscape. The area thus retains some of the character it originally had.

The Newport Historic District is a historic district that covers 250 acres in the center of Newport in the U.S. state of Rhode Island. It was designated a National Historic Landmark (NHL) in 1968 due to its extensive and well-preserved assortment of intact colonial buildings dating from the early and mid-18th century. Six of those buildings are themselves NHLs in their own right, including the city's oldest house and the former meeting place of the colonial and state legislatures. Newer and modern buildings coexist with the historic structures.

Historic District Commission

To maintain the district's historic character, the city created its Historic District Commission (HDC) at the same time as the district itself. It consists of nine citizens appointed to three-year terms by the City Council to oversee not just the downtown historic district but Newport's other historic districts, two of which (downtown and Bellevue Avenue) are also recognized as National Historic Landmarks. The city considers them all one large district for its administrative purposes.^[3]

The HDC must review any exterior alterations to a building in the district beyond ordinary maintenance and repair, and issue a Certificate of Appropriateness. It cannot order any changes made to a property.^[3]

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The Newport Casino is an athletic complex and recreation center located at 186–202 Bellevue Avenue, Newport, Rhode Island, United States. Built in 1880, it was designated a National Historic Landmark on February 27, 1987, in recognition for its architectural significance as one of the nation's finest Shingle style buildings, and for its importance in the history of tennis in the United States. The complex now houses the International Tennis Hall of Fame, and was the site of the earliest US Opens.

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The Elms is a large mansion, facetiously a "summer cottage", located at 367 Bellevue Avenue, Newport, Rhode Island. The Elms was designed by architect Horace Trumbauer (1868–1938) for the coal baron Edward Julius Berwind (1848–1936), and was completed in 1901. Its design was copied from the Château d'Asnières in Asnières-sur-Seine, France. The gardens and landscaping were created by C. H. Miller and E. W. Bowditch, working closely with Trumbauer. The Elms has been designated a National Historic Landmark and today is open to the public.

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Ocean Drive may refer to:

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The Ochre Point–Cliffs Historic District is a historic district in Newport, Rhode Island. The district includes a significant subset of the Bellevue Avenue Historic District, a National Historic Landmark District, including all of the major Gilded Age mansions on the waterfront facing Easton Bay between Memorial Boulevard and Marine Avenue. The district is home to famous mansions such as the William Watts Sherman House and The Breakers, one of the largest houses in the area built by the Vanderbilt Family. The district was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1975.

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The Stonybrook Estate Historic District is a historic district at 501-521 Indian Ave. and 75 Vaucluse Avenue in Middletown, Rhode Island. It encompasses what was the largest and most elaborate summer estate built in Middletown, an outgrowth of the expansion of Newport's summer resort community into neighboring towns. The late Gothic Revival main house, built in 1928, was designed by Horace Trumbauer for Edward C. Knight, Jr., for whom he had also designed a house on Newport's Bellevue Avenue. The district includes the estate's landscaped grounds, along with a carriage house, several guest cottages, a gate house, and a gardener's cottage.

References

↑ National Park Service (2008-04-15). "National Register Information System". National Register of Historic Places . National Park Service.
↑ "Ocean Drive Historic District". National Historic Landmark summary listing. National Park Service. Retrieved 2008-06-29.
1 2 "City of Newport – Department of Planning, Zoning and Inspection – Historic District Commission". Archived from the original on 2008-05-06. Retrieved 2008-04-27.

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[nris-1] National Park Service (2008-04-15). "National Register Information System". National Register of Historic Places . National Park Service.

[nhlsum-2] "Ocean Drive Historic District". National Historic Landmark summary listing. National Park Service. Retrieved 2008-06-29.

[HDC-3] 1 2 "City of Newport – Department of Planning, Zoning and Inspection – Historic District Commission". Archived from the original on 2008-05-06. Retrieved 2008-04-27.

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