Newport’s history is long and colorful. Founded in 1639 by people fleeing the religious intolerance of the
first European settlers in the Cape Cod area, the town soon became one of the richest trading centers of the
colonial era. Up until 1776, slaves, rum, whaling, the China trade—and even piracy—were all part of that prosperous growth. The American Revolution brought economic disaster to Newport, occupied first by the British and then by the French. Though the French came as allies, prudent merchant captains still took their cargoes to less threatened ports. After the war, Newport never caught up to Boston and New York, although the city slowly regained its prosperity. Starting in the third decade of the 19th Century, there was a summer influx of prosperous families from southern coastal areas. The Civil War ended this trend but it was soon replaced by wealthy New Yorkers and other notables wishing to form a summer community with their peers. They built increasingly ostentatious “summer cottages,” some of which have survived to become tourist attractions. The most well-known of these relics from the Gilded Age is the Breakers, once the summer home of Cornelius Vanderbilt.