The following History Byte is the ninth and final installment of a nine-part series. Click here to read them all. Thornton Wilder wrote about the Nine Cities of Newport in his semi-auto biographical novel, Theophilus North. The Ninth City Wilder mused “was, and is, and long will be.” He was referring to the heart of […]
https://newporthistory.org/history-bytes-nine-cities-part-9/The following History Byte is the eighth of a nine-part series. Click here to read them all. The Eighth City in Thornton Wilder’s Theophilus North was comprised of camp-followers, fortune-hunters, and party crashers. Perhaps one of the most notorious fortune hunters to summer in Newport was Harry Lehr, who married New York socialite Elizabeth Wharton […]
https://newporthistory.org/history-bytes-nine-cities-part-8/The following History Byte is the seventh of a nine-part series. Click here to read them all. Thornton Wilder’s Seventh City in Theophilus North belongs “to those who never enter the front door of the house in which they live.” Wilder was referring to the army of people who worked at the mansions, ensuring that […]
https://newporthistory.org/history-bytes-nine-cities-part-7/The following History Byte is the sixth of a nine-part series. Click here to read them all. The Sixth City referenced in Thornton Wilder’s Theophilus North consisted of “the very rich, the empire-builders” who built their grand summer cottages along Bellevue Avenue. The man largely responsible for paving the way for the development of what […]
https://newporthistory.org/history-bytes-nine-cities-part-6/The following History Byte is the fifth of a nine-part series. Click here to read them all. In July 1877, The Newport Mercury reported “there exists in Newport another social strata, quite distinct from the fashionable one” on Bellevue Avenue, one “which may be called intellectual.… The very best people here, the real crème de […]
https://newporthistory.org/history-bytes-nine-cities-part-5/The following History Byte is the fourth of a nine-part series. Click here to read them all. Thornton Wilder’s Fourth City in Theophilus North “belongs to the Army and the Navy.” One of the first things Theophilus does when he arrives in Newport is secure a room at the Young Man’s Christian Association, “not the […]
https://newporthistory.org/history-bytes-nine-cities-part-4/