USA > Rhode Island > Rhode Island : three centuries of democracy, Vol. II > Part 94
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* "A grove of peace, a woodland wild and free, That we may see the face of Nature there- And oft I found, as Lincoln Woods I trod That Nature's vision brought me near to God."*
Other reservations of more than 100 acres each are Barrington Parkway along the high bluff in East Providence, from which may be seen the Providence River and upper Narragan- sett Bay, and across Bowers Cove and through the woods back of Squantum ; Haines Memorial Park in East Providence and Barrington; Ten Mile River Reservation in East Providence. Besides these, the State holds the Mashapaug Reservation on the shore of Mashapaug Pond, Meshanticut Park and Parkway, Pawtuxet River Reservation, Troop C Park adjoining Skel- eton Valley, Stillhouse Cove, and Edgewood Beach, all in Cranston; Chepiwanoxet, Arnold's Neck, Narragansett Parkway, and Nausauket Beach, all in Warwick; Neutaconkanut Hill, in Johnston; Peter Randall Reservation, in North Providence; Seekonk River Reservation, in Pawtucket; Canada Pond Parkway, Corliss Park, Metcalf Field and West River Parkway, all in Providence ; and Woonasquatucket Reservation, including Merino Park and Dyerville Park, lying in Johnston and Providence. The Metropolitan Park Commission's plan for further acquisition was halted temporarily ; three bond issues to finance the project were approved by the people in 1906, 1912, and 1928.
CITY PARKS-The city of Providence has thirty-five parks and twenty-five playgrounds and recreation fields, together comprising 750 acres. The largest park is Roger Williams, 450 acres, acquired in part by devise from Betsey Williams and in part by purchase. The park sur- rounds a series of lakes which are used for boating and bathing in summer and for skating in winter. The park has been developed into a beautiful garden, with particular attention to land- scapes, flowering plants, shrubs and trees. Other attractions at the park include museum, menagerie, deer park, boathouse, athletic building, casino, athletic field, tennis courts, and trot- ting track. The city erected a bronze heroic statue of Roger Williams in 1876, which was designed by Franklin Simmons of Rome. Other monuments include a bronze figure of a fal- coner, erected as a memorial to Elisha Dyer, and a bronze bust of D. W. Reeves, director of the concerts by the American Band, which were favorite entertainments for many years at the park, attracting thousands of listeners. A concrete bandstand was erected in 1915, and in 1924 the "Temple of Music," gift of William C. Benedict, was dedicated. The temple cost over $200,000.
*"Lincoln Woods," by Rev. John F. Sullivan.
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Other large city parks in Providence include Blackstone, Neutaconkanut Hill, King, Davis, Pleasant Valley Parkway and Dexter. Training Ground. Roger Williams Square marks the site of the State Rock, on which Roger Williams first landed in Providence; Hopkins Park surrounds the house of Admiral Esek Hopkins; and Fort Independence Park occupies the site of a fortification erected during the War of 1812. Garden parks are maintained at City Hall, Public Garden and Gladys Potter Garden. Parks occupying city blocks are Tockwotton, Washington Square, Franklin Square, Hayward Park, Arnold Square, and Hunt Park. Other small parks, at street junctions, are Burnside Square, Fenner Park, Admiral Hopkins Square, Abbott Park, Hospital Park, Hoppin Square, Columbus Park and Columbia Park. Prospect Terrace, on the East Side Hill, affords an unusual view of the city and surrounding territory north, west and south. A new park, on the site of Roger Williams spring, gift of Justice J. Jerome Hahn, is in process of development in 1930. Blackstone Park consists principally of a natural wooded grotto stretching from Blackstone Boulevard to the banks of the Seekonk River. An even more beautiful grotto lies to the north on the grounds of Butler Asylum, which include the farm once named grotto farm. Close to the Barrington Park- way, south on the grounds of the Squantum Club, is another grotto, from which a palisaded cliff rises high as the tops of the tallest trees. One branch of a forked pathway leads into the grotto, winding around the face of the cliff ; the other rises to the top of the cliff, from which an unusual view of Narragansett Bay may be had. The same mighty forces which bared the ledge at Squantum piled up the rocky islands which strew the East Providence water front from Fuller's Rock on Kettle Point, on past Pomham. The playgrounds in Providence, com- prising sixty-four acres, are scattered over the city and include the Obadiah Brown farm, pur- chased as a site for a municipal golf course.
Besides the public beach, Ocean Avenue, and the Cliff Walk, and Miantonomi Memorial Park, Newport maintains nearly fifty acres of public parks. The public beach is one of the most famous in America ; on its fine white sand the Atlantic Ocean pours a never-failing surf. The beach, a mile wide, lies between two projecting rocky headlands and shelves so gradually that thousands may bathe with little danger of drowning. The city of Newport has developed the beach property as a municipal enterprise, maintaining bathing houses and renting conces- sions for a variety of amusements and entertainments. During the summer season the beach lures thousands of Newporters and visitors daily. Other beaches in and near Newport are Spouting Rock Beach, the resort of members of the Newport Cottage colony ; Hazard's Beach, on the Ocean Drive; Second Beach, beyond the hill at the easterly end of Newport Beach ; and Sachuset Beach, called also Third Beach, along the Seaconnet River. The Ocean Drive winds for over ten miles around the southern end of the island, affording views of the Atlantic Ocean, and the gardens and lawns of fine estates. The Cliff Walk supplements Ocean Drive; it has been maintained through vigorous assertion of public right, as a promenade along the palisades fronting the ocean and the beach, and delighting visitors with a panorama of almost unparal- leled beauty. The city of Newport has resisted concerted and individual action by proprietors of estates facing the Cliff Walk to close it to the public or to obstruct public use. Other parks in Newport include the reservation in Washington Square on the site of the historic Parade, and Touro Park with the Old Stone Mill.
Pawtucket has six public parks, of which Slater Memorial Park along the Ten Mile River is the largest and best developed. The Daggett House, in the park, is maintained as a Colonial museum. Other Pawtucket parks are Wilkinson, Collyer, Carter, People's and Broadway. Pawtucket maintains nine playgrounds, including a municipal athletic field. The total area of Pawtucket parks is approximately 160 acres. Central Falls, a city with an area of only 1.27 square miles, has Jenks Park, which preserves an unusual geological formation of boulders, and includes also a public garden. Woonsocket has nearly 120 acres of park land in Globe Park, Barry Memorial Field, Cold Spring Park, Cross Park and Fairmount Playground, besides
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three large playgrounds. Westerly's civic centre borders Wilcox Park, a beauty spot combining natural areas with finely developed landscapes and gardens. Barrington controls a town bathing beach, and holds other lands in trust for development for park purposes. Bristol has preserved intact and open for park and recreation purposes a large part of the town's ancient common, and has had access to the public drives and walks on the Samuel P. Colt estate, which follows the water front on Narragansett Bay for several miles. The town controls a municipal bathing beach. Much of the ancient common land of Little Compton has been occupied for public purposes, including in 1929 a site for a central public school building. A remnant of the com- mon is still open as public property.
BEAUTIFUL NEWPORT-"The climate is like that of Italy, and not at all colder in winter than I have known it everywhere north of Rorne," wrote Berkeley in 1729. Narragansett Bay, with Newport as its leading seaport, was already seat of a profitable commerce, which had made the island town the most prosperous municipality on the Atlantic seaboard. Thither came com- mercial travelers from the ports with which trade had been established, and later other travelers, so that the town had become cosmopolitan as well as metropolitan long before Reverend Ezra Stiles began to note in his diary the names of strangers whom he met. Along with commerce the town had achieved a reputation for climate, and, even before the Revolution, had become a favorite resort for wealthy planters from southern colonies, who sought in summer relief from the excessive heat on their plantations. The town had begun to learn ways of taking profit from catering to visitors, lessons that would be helpful in the later history of the city. Newport revived tardily after the Revolution; elsewhere also the devastation of war had produced eco- nomic disturbance and distress. Eventually the tide turned, and early in the nineteenth century Newport had resumed the appearances of prosperity, although commerce had not regained its earlier importance. The reputation of the town as a pleasant summer resort brought to it an increasing number of visitors, members of wealthy families from states to the south. Hotels and boarding houses were well patronized, and Newport was profiting, although the town was as yet scarcely conscious of the possibility that its greatest sources of wealth were probably an unequalled climate, a most remarkable natural environment, and another water front than that which faced the magnificent harbor. The building of Fort Adams helped Newport, as it brought army officers and their families, and through them spread abroad tales of the beautiful sur- roundings and the wonderful climate.
By 1850 wealthy families were well established as annual summer residents, returning year after year, and, in some instances, buying land and building cottages. The Newport cot- tage at that time was a very modest establishment in comparison with the Newport cottages of a later period. In 1885 Newport was still entertaining a large part of the summer visiting popula- tion in hotels. The Ocean House, Aquidneck, Perry House, United States Hotel, Park House, Brayton House and Bellevue Avenue Hotel were rated at that time as "unexcelled by any in the country," and Newport had "a number of other good hotels of a less expensive character." Bellevue Avenue was described as "being a beautiful boulevard lined with the residences of fashionable people" and always presenting "a gay appearance from the number of their splen- did equipages that during the season are continually to be seen there." Newport was even then in the process of change from a summer resort entertaining its visitors in hotels to a more exclusive type of resort centering on cottage life. Ocean Avenue was described in 1885 as fac- ing the ocean on one side ; "on the other are the palatial villas surrounded by beautiful grounds, where wealth and art have accomplished all that the highest culture and the most lavish expendi- ture could achieve." In the course of a few years most of the hotels had been abandoned, save one or two which persisted as commercial hotels.
Newport had become the summer resort most frequented by fashionable people and smart society, the Four Hundred as listed by Ward McAllister in his social register, or blue book, of persons eligible for invitation to exclusive functions. To Newport came the most wealthy
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Americans, the millionaire society of the nineteenth century and the multi-millionaire of the twentieth. The Newport cottage colony grew apace. Newport "cottages" became magnificent mansions, among which the Vanderbilt million dollar marble palace had its place in the sun for a day and then its eclipse. The "cottages," surrounded by great landed estates with mar- velous gardens and lawns, lined Ocean Avenue and the famous Cliff Walk along the ocean front of the island between the beaches. Each provided for scores of guests accommodations not equalled in the finest hotels. The owner employed a retinue of house servants, gardeners, coachmen and stablemen, besides craftsmen of various trades, under conditions such that the establishment was practically intact year after year without limitation to a short season. Each "cottage" was known by a name or by the name of the owner, and drivers of vans and carriages who guided casual visitors and day excursionists over the "cottage drive" or the "ocean drive," delighted to recite the names of owners, statistics of cost and of accommodations, and occasion- ally other information, including bits of racy scandal about society people. One part of New- port had become an exclusive resort for the extremely wealthy, with Bellevue Avenue in the summer time the smartest street in America, and Spouting Rock Beach and the Casino reserved as meeting places for the socially elect. The accommodations provided in large cottages robbed the hotels of what had been a very profitable patronage, and as the hotels were closed Newport society tended to become more and more exclusive.
Bellevue Avenue continued as a fashionable street thronged by the carriages of the elect. The carriages were drawn by beautifully matched horses, which were driven by owners or coachmen, the latter in livery. Footmen, in livery also, completed the equipage. So well estab- lished were horses, carriage, coachman and footman as accessories of genuinely smart society in Newport that the automobile did not replace them for years after it had become the favored vehicle elsewhere. The coach and carriage have passed, even in Newport, and coachman and footman have become chauffeur and porter, respectively. Equestrianism remains popular, and Newport has a reputation for beautiful riding horses, graceful horsemen and horsewomen. The streets and roads in the fashionable section are maintained with top dressing suitable for horses. Newport society was an aristocracy of good breeding and fine manners, to enter and continue in which wealth and leisure were necessary, although wealth alone could not assure entree and recognition. Against the merely wealthy and the nouveau riche an impassable bar- rier was maintained. Thus Newport society has established and continued traditions which have tended to stability, and families have returned in successive generations.
Jamestown, on the Island of Conanicut, reached by ferry from Newport or Saunderstown, also became a famous resort, with a splendid bathing beach, fine summer hotels and cottages on favored sites. Much of the island, as it stretches from Beaver Tail to North Light, has been preserved in natural loveliness along well-kept drives. Across the bay to the west lies Saunders- town, also a favorite cottage resort. Further south, at Narragansett Pier, still another summer resort rose as a rival to Newport along the beaches and behind the sand dunes fronting bay and ocean toward Point Judith. Hotels were built and magnificent cottages, including beautiful Canonchet, which Senator William Sprague erected for Kate Chase Sprague, with eighty guest chambers and other accommodations for the brilliant train of Congressmen, office-holders and politicians who followed the Spragues from Washington in the period when Kate Chase Sprague was the most charming figure and the most popular at the national capital. Narra- gansett Pier was known as the "Pier" the country over ; to it thronged smart society people, wealthy families and men of position, Senators and Congressmen, members of the President's Cabinet, and diplomatic representatives of foreign nations, all seeking escape from the heat and humidity of Washington, and at the same time diversion in the busy round of social entertain- ment at Narragansett Pier. The Casino at the Pier was more famous even than the Casino at Newport. Narragansett Bay had become seat of the summer capital of the United States.
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Newport's splendid harbor, and the development of fortifications and naval stations made Narragansett Bay also the northern summer rendezvous for the navy. Newport has been a favorite last home port for retired naval officers, many of whom have been identified with the life of the municipality. To Newport came also the fleet of the New York Yacht Club, which maintained a station at Newport, the harbor presenting a picture of rare loveliness with fleets at anchor, or when with sails spread they cruised about. Newport never became a manufactur- ing centre; several enterprises were undertaken without success that would warrant continu- ance or extension. Eventually the city settled down as a summer resort principally and as a station for the development of United States Government enterprises, these furnishing employ- ment for large numbers of the inhabitants. Newport was merely capitalizing its unsurpassed wealth of beauty of countrysde and water front, its magnificent harbor, and a climate without rival. Not Newport alone, however, but miles of surf-beaten beaches from Point Judith to Watch Hill along the ocean front, and other miles of quieter sandy beaches along both sides of Narragansett Bay invite people to Rhode Island for the summer. Newport, Narragansett Pier and Watch Hill are famous resorts; Saunderstown, Jameston, Bristol and Middletown are well known.
A PEOPLE'S PLAYGROUND-Rhode Island has never been a summer land reserved as a playground for the very rich from other places less favored by climate and natural beauty- merely recapitulating in recent centuries the tradition which identifies it as the Vinland winter resort of Norsemen, and the mecca to which the eastern Indians returned every sixth cycle of eleven years. The period of migration was approximately 65 years ; probably it was 66, or six weather cycles. Records of unusually severe winters the world over indicate recurrence at eleven year periods. In Newport the public beach is much finer in every way than Spouting Rock Beach and Hazard's Beach, the latter exclusive, the former a piece of municipal property open to all the world. The public beaches at Narragansett Pier surpass the few stretches reserved by private ownership. Along the ocean shore of South County are miles of surf-beaten beaches, and behind them salt ponds with quieter water, in large part awaiting development.
Within Narragansett Bay, on the shores of mainland and islands are other miles of beaches and beautiful places, near which cottage colonies have been built. These are the summer homes of Rhode Islanders principally, houses of all types, from small bungalows to more elaborate structures, depending upon the need or the ambition of the owners. To these whole families go for long summer vacations-May until September or October-while members of the families whom business or occupation calls back to town or city commute in public conveyances or travel back and forth in automobiles. Rhode Island is a compact state ; a short ride, both in mileage and time, carries one from city to beach, from the heat of a working day to a swim or bath in salt water freshened twice daily by the tides, a pleasant evening, and a long night of restful sleep, invigorating because practically in open air. It is entirely practicable for a Rhode Islander to make his summer home a cottage by the shore, and if obliged to travel back and forth to work, to cover fewer miles and spend less time on the road than do the business men of metro- politan cities who reside in suburban towns and neighboring cities. All of Rhode Island lies within a radius of fifty miles from Providence.
The number of summer cottages built close to the shores of Narragansett Bay mounts into thousands, and the distribution is almost continuous for thirty miles on each side of the estuary, without counting wind and fold, cape and cove, and the deep cuts made by rivers, all of which lengthen the waterfront available for development as shore property. While location directly on beach or waterfront is preferred, communities sometimes extend back from favorite beaches. One typical shore community lies between two deep-cut coves at the head of Narragansett Bay, ten miles from Providence, from which it is reached by rail or automobile in twenty to thirty minutes. The houses are built on small plats of land, and the settlement is compact. The shore front affords splendid bathing on clean, sandy beaches, which shelve slowly. The community
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has a small yacht clubhouse at the end of a pier extending 500 feet from shore, in which dances are conducted twice weekly, along with other entertainment. House rentals are so reasonable that families in moderate circumstances can afford to hire and occupy them for the season.
The development of state public roads and of travel by automobile have permitted an even more general resort to shore places in the twentieth century than ever before. Cottage life accommodates whole families, and the number of summer cottages multiplied by four would fall short of the number of Rhode Islanders on vacation. Besides cottages, hundreds of tents are pitched in favored places, many of large size, with wooden floors and considerable furniture, which is stored through the winter. Travel has been found to be so convenient in the instance of what were originally summer settlements that there has been a tendency to permanent all- year residence by the shore, summer houses being furnished with lath and plaster and heated. Shore winters are found to be little more, if not actually less, severe than city or inland winters. Because of the salt water, snowfall is usually smaller, snow being converted into rain close to the shore; and snow on the ground melts more rapidly and disappears in shorter time than inland.
Rhode Islanders who do not care for salt water bathing and salt water sports find pleasant places on inland hillsides or on the shores of fresh water ponds and lakes. The tendency to seek residence beyond the congestion of cities produces heavy vehicular traffic on roads leading to shore places and other popular resorts ; the transportation probleni suggested has been solved in part by building parallel roads, and by widening many arteries of travel to accommodate from four to six lines of automobiles. Gains for Rhode Island appear in better health of inhabitants who find wholesome living conditions in the pleasant places so abundantly provided.
For shorter vacations Rhode Island affords unusual advantages ; one who can afford a week or a fortnight, finds small hotels or boarding houses located conveniently for access to beaches or other pleasure resorts. For such the preference lies in places more remote from northern towns and cities than the upper reaches of Narragansett Bay. The beaches along the ocean shore of South County, Newport and Block Island are attractive and well patronized by short vacation visitors. Block Island, lying miles at sea, is a favorite resort, offering surf bathing, deep sea fishing, ocean breezes and a busy social life in the evening dancing parties conducted in the hotels.
Finally Rhode Island has chances for day excursionists, whose number is legion. Time was when fleets of excursion steamers carried thousands to amusement parks along Narra- gansett Bay ; electric trains and automobiles replaced the steamers as means of transportation. Only a few steamers, offering boat ride to Newport and Block Island, remain in commission, and these carry crowds daily in the summer season. The day trip to Block Island, besides the 100 mile round trip from Providence, permits an hour or two ashore for lunch and sight-seeing. The day excursionists to Newport may spend five or six hours ashore, part at the bathing beach, part on pleasant rides to Newport's beauty spots along the ocean front, and part on the Cliff Walk. with its never-failing charm. Other shore resorts are reached by tramway, gasoline bus or private automobile.
RHODE ISLAND CLAMBAKE-A Rhode Islander, after eating an unusually good shore din- ner in a neighboring state, remarked that it was the best he had ever tasted outside Rhode Island ; the supreme praise without limitation is reserved for Rhode Island clambakes only. A Rhode Island clambake starts with Rhode Island clams; no others have the flavor. The pop- ularity of clambakes in Rhode Island diminished when, because of a shortage of Rhode Island clanis, alien bivalves from Maine and Massachusetts were substituted for the home article. A Rhode Island clambake, properly prepared and with suitable ingredients, is a feast ; no language has words adequate for a description of it.
Not even Zeus upon Olympus height From godlike nectar drew such rare delight.
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A Rhode Island clambake is an aboriginal repast ; the white man learned the art of making it from the Indians. As served in modern times the feast opens usually with "little neck clams" on the half-shell. The little neck is a small quahaug, or hard-shelled clam whose habitat is below low-water mark. In formal service little necks are offered on plates cooled by cracked ice, with lemon, pepper-sauce, catsup, vinegar, horse radish, or tabasco; at a genuine clambake formal service is dispensed with, and the feaster opens his own little necks under the shade of a tree, frees them from the shell with a deft turn of the knife, with left hand carries shell to mouth, and swallows the quahaug with the juice, one after another until satisfied. Little necks are appetizers, having the salt tang of the sea. Meanwhile clam chowder has been brew- ing. The Indian cooked his chowder by heating a mixture of water, vegetables and clams, into which he dropped red-hot stones until the chowder boiled. A modern Rhode Island chowder of the genuine sort consumes hours in making. blending and brewing which produce the perfect article. Salt pork is rendered ; onions are fried, and into the mixture of pork fat and onions a little water is introduced, and the pot boils steadily. Later, potatoes, finely minced, and at the end chopped clams and quahaugs are added, and the mixture brews until thoroughly cooked so that potatoes and onions are indistinguishable. Most Rhode Islanders add tomato; only a few, milk or cream. In yesteryears a dash of sherry added zest. If properly prepared the chowder is an unctuous mixture of blended essences. Fried eels with sauce tartare and clam fritters may accompany the chowder course.
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