People gather at the dedication ceremony for the Memorial Tower, August 29, 1929. Photograph from the Miantonomi Memorial Park Commission records (MS.094), NHS.
Guest post by Kerry McAuliffe, NHS Archives Intern and graduate student at Simmons School of Library and Information Science
This year marks the centennial of the end of World War I. Fifty-six servicemen from Newport lost their lives fighting in the Great War, and efforts to create a war memorial began a few years after the war’s end. The Miantonomi Memorial Park Commission was established in January 1921, and plans were soon adopted to purchase Miantonomi Hill and create a memorial park.
The City of Newport purchased Miantonomi Hill and the surrounding area, located in northern Newport near the Middletown town line, in July 1921 from Helen Phelps Stokes, on the condition that the 30 acres be used “for a public park.” Architects R. Clipston Sturgis and Frederick Law Olmsted Jr. led the landscape design efforts of the park. The Commission dedicated the site as a war memorial on Armistice Day, 1923. The architecture firm McKim, Mead & White was hired to design a memorial tower. This culminated in the dedication of the Memorial Tower on August 29th, 1929.
Elevation drawing of the Memorial Tower by McKim, Mead & White. Plan from the Miantonomi Memorial Park Commission records (MS.094), NHS.
The Memorial Park was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1969, and the Aquidneck Land Trust secured a permanent conservation easement for the park in 2005. In 2017, an award was granted by the U.S. World War I Centennial Commission, in part, to replace the tablets honoring the servicemen from Newport killed in World War I. The new tablets will be mounted to the Memorial Tower this coming Memorial Day.
Last year the City of Newport donated a collection of Miantonomi Memorial Park Commission records to the Newport Historical Society. Given to the City by the family of James G. Edward, a longtime former chairman of the Commission, the collection contains original architectural drawings and blueprints of the park and tower. Meeting minutes offer a first-hand account of the planning efforts that went into establishing the park and constructing the tower. Several photographs of the 1929 dedication ceremony of the Memorial Tower are also included in the collection. Several well-known Newporters can be seen in attendance that day, including Mrs. William Sims, then Chairman of the Committee, her husband Admiral William S. Sims and Maud Howe Elliott. The collection has been processed and a finding aid is available through NHS’s Collections Online.
Anne Hitchcock Sims, Chairman of the Commission, speaks at the dedication ceremony for the Memorial Tower, August 29. 1929. Among those seated behind her are her husband, Admiral William S. Sims (second from right), and Maud Howe Elliott (far left). Photograph from the Miantonomi Memorial Park Commission records (MS.094), NHS.