Brenton Point Sea Wall - Newport RI

City:: Newport, RI
Site Type:: Infrastructure and Utilities, Flood and Erosion Control
New Deal Agencies:: Work Relief Programs, Works Progress Administration (WPA)
Started:: 1935
Completed:: 1939

Description

“At the southern-most tip of Aquidneck Island lies a WPA sea wall that helps protect the historic seaside city of Newport, Rhode Island.

Just feet inland from the 10-foot-high concrete sea wall that runs over a mile sit some of the largest and most historic mansions in the country. The Mansion District extends up through town and includes the homes of some of the wealthiest industrialists in the US at the turn of the 19th century, including coal baron Edward Julius Berwind whose house and “servants quarters” you can now tour.

Newport’s Mansion District and wealthy community relied, in part, on the 2,229 “servants” that lived in the city by 1895. These domestic and grounds workers, most of whom were European immigrants from England and Ireland, made up over 10% of the population of Newport.

Like the domestic workers and range of civil services in place by 1939, the WPA-constructed sea walls and other infrastructure built to shore up this “Gilded Society” is often overlooked or deliberately ignored in the telling of Newport’s opulent past and privileged present.”