From Newport to Watch Hill: How Rhode Island Perfected the Art of Summering
“Summer afternoon—summer afternoon; to me those have always been the two most beautiful words in the English language.”
Henry James said these words to Edith Wharton in 1880, and nearly a century and a half later, they still ring true. Granted, this was in reference to an English idyll, but the same could be true for New England—and particularly Newport, Rhode Island, where the two writers were both summer residents. While a summer afternoon evokes a feeling of sun-drenched laziness and seaside serenity, summering in Newport in the late 19th century was also quite strenuous—and particularly so for social climbers, for whom it was a full-contact sport. It is perhaps unsurprising, then, that Newport claims to be the country’s first true resort town; it’s even, dare we say, the coastal enclave that invented summering in the U.S.—and yes, that’s summer as a verb.
As America’s oldest resort town—that is, the first seaside destination catering specifically to vacationing residents for only a portion of the year—Newport is the town where “summer” became both a season and a sport. Rather than spending their time in the New England coastal town to relax and regroup after nine months of party-throwing and status-seeking in New York City, the Gilded Age vacationers who swapped Park Avenue for Bellevue simply upped the ante. The season lasted only eight weeks, but women would pack 90 evening gowns for lavish galas that included the Fairy Tale Ball (self-explanatory), and the Dog Ball (where over 100 lucky canines were treated to a three-course meal).
Summering in Newport was a signifier of belonging to a certain social class. Beginning in the 1800s, wealthy industrialists moved households from New York and Boston at the start of the season, retiring to their Gilded Age “summer cottages” (Cornelius Vanderbilt’s estate, the Breakers, featured an oh-so-quaint 70 rooms) along Bellevue Avenue. In Newport, this annual summer ritual has continued for generations. Many of the most famous mansions of that era, including the Breakers and Marble House, are now operated as museums, but the descendants of those original old-money families still persist in their yearly pilgrimage to the Rhode Island coast—along with the day-trippers and tourists, of course.
But Newport isn’t the only Rhode Island resort town that dates back centuries. For a famously tiny state, it’s still home to a number of storied seaside communities, as befitting its nickname, the Ocean State. If you’re looking for true old-money opulence, whether it’s of the gilded Bellevue variety or the sleepier, quieter luxury elsewhere on the coast, Rhode Island is still the state to see and be seen in the summertime. From the charmingly rural farmlands of Little Compton to the laid-back surf haven of Narragansett, read on for the top Rhode Island seaside towns where summer is more than a verb—it’s an entire lifestyle.
