“The Ruin Is to Be Preserved”: An 1844 Letter from Former Rhode Island Governor William Channing Gibbs Opposing a Proposal to Turn the Old Stone Mill Lot into a Public Park.
Newport, Rhode Island: September 12, 1844. Autograph letter signed, three pages on a folded sheet, with integral address panel to William D. Sohier, Esq., attorney at law, Boston, and Newport postal marking. 7 ½ x 9 ½ inches. Old folds, small seal tear and light toning. Very good. Item #BK0185 A letter from former Rhode Island governor William Channing Gibbs concerning the ownership and preservation of Newport’s Old Stone Mill, or Newport Tower, written during the first great expansion of the city as a summer resort. Gibbs was a lifelong Newporter who served as governor from 1821 to 1824. Writing to Boston attorney William Davies Sohier, he gives a detailed account of his family’s title to the Stone Mill property and the development pressure then building around it: “The Stone Mill lot was obtained by my mother by purchase — my brother borrowed $8000 of her & as he could not refund, she took this lot & gave him up his note. It was valued at $2000. The other lot joining; Mrs Laura Gibbs has sold for $4500 last month. it contained 179 feet front & capable of making five handsome building lots. The Stone Mill contains 400 feet front — one half of which is taken up by the old ruin, & only capable of two building lots without encroaching on this ancient ruin.” The adjoining Gibbs property had just been sold for hotel development. Gibbs describes plans for a building large enough to cover the entire lot: “On the Lot just sold by Mrs Laura Gibbs, they are erecting a large Hotel for 400 persons which covers the whole Lot. They now want the mill lot for a Park for their comfort or a valuable Garden & they say they can raise 3000 for that object.” The hotel was almost certainly the Atlantic House, erected in 1844 at Bellevue Avenue and Pelham Street, immediately facing the future Touro Park. William T. Potter purchased the site that year and commissioned Russell Warren to design the large Greek Revival resort hotel, one of the buildings associated with Newport’s emergence as a major summer destination. Gibbs strongly opposed the proposed park, fearing that the hotel and a public pleasure ground would make his adjoining home intolerable: “If it thus sold, it would bring it to my Door & myself & family must seek for a residence elsewhere. The Hotel of this kind alone is a nuisance in so small a Town but a Park added to it for all the Rowdies of this place and elsewhere would drive us away.” His alternative was private purchase with an explicit requirement that the structure remain standing. Later in the letter he tells Sohier: “now if you can sell it to me reasonably with the condition that the ruin is to be preserved, I will purchase it […] If this lot was converted to a Park, the ruin would be destroyed in less than two years […] I would preserve it if I never had a dollar of income from the Lot.” The proposal is interesting in light of what followed: ten years later Judah Touro left $10,000 for the purchase of the Old Stone Mill property as a public park; the resulting Touro Park preserved the structure that Gibbs feared public ownership would destroy. The Newport Historical Society’s Old Stone Mill collection preserves later correspondence concerning both the establishment of Touro Park and preservation of the Mill.[1] An early document of the competing pressures surrounding the Newport Tower—private property, hotel development, a proposed public park, and preservation of the “ancient ruin”—written a decade before the creation of Touro Park. [1] Newport Historical Society’s Old Stone Mill collection, MS.1854.8, Newport Historical Society, accessed October 12, 2026, https://www.riamco.org/render?eadid=US-RNHi-MS.1854.8&view=inventory.
Price: $650.00