by NRF User | Apr 30, 2019 | NRF News
Spring is here, and the Newport Restoration Foundation is ready to begin yet another exciting season. NRF’s three museums: Rough Point Museum, Whitehorne House Museum, and Prescott Farm will offer a variety of free and ticketed programs for all ages and interests. Please mark your calendars for upcoming special events including:
Ask a Gardener
Rough Point
April 27, May 25, June 29 / 11:00-11:30 am
Free with house or grounds admission
Tour the Rough Point grounds in the company of experts – once a month our estate gardeners share their expertise on a range of topics from plant identification to organic garden care. Get insider tips about how the Rough Point staff keep the grounds looking lush and how to incorporate those practices in your own home garden. This event is free with house or grounds admission.
Second Sundays: Touch Tank with Save the Bay
Prescott Farm
May 12 / 12:00-3:00 pm / Free
Community comes together to enjoy the largest public open space on Aquidneck Island. Each month NRF joins with a non-profit partner to highlight the expansive history and horticulture of Prescott Farm. Explore the nature trails with our guest guides, chat up URI’s Master Gardeners, or climb inside the historic windmill – themes, guests, and activities change monthly! For our May event, Save the Bay brings their Traveling Touch Tank!
Stone Wall Workshop
Prescott Farm
June 1 / 9:30 am–12:30 pm
Registration: $40; advance purchase required. Space limited.
Learn the art of traditional stone wall construction and repair from the experts. Join master class instructors Chris and Dan Smith for their sixteenth year leading this hands-on workshop. Great for owners of historic properties in New England who have their own stone wall projects, or for anyone interested in the history and craft of stone walls.
Second Sundays: Bird Walking & Watching at the Farm
Prescott Farm
June 9 / 12:00-3:00 pm / Free
Community comes together to enjoy the largest public open space on Aquidneck Island. Each month NRF joins with a non-profit partner to highlight the expansive history and horticulture of Prescott Farm. Explore the nature trails with our guest guides, chat up URI’s Master Gardeners, or climb inside the historic windmill – themes, guests, and activities change monthly! Bird Walking & Watching at the Farm will be June’s theme.
The Myth & Mystique of Doris Duke’s Cultural Curiosity
Rough Point
June 13 / 5:00-7:00 pm
Tickets: $15
Gospel singing, belly-dancing, longboard surfing – Doris took up each of these hobbies by turn and moved on just as quickly. What prompted her interest? Was she welcomed in these communities? And what sort of legacy did she leave behind? This discussion-based program will take a closer look.
Newport County Free Days
Rough Point & Whitehorne House Museum
June 15 & 16 / 10:00 am–5:00 pm
Free to all Newport County residents with ID
Have you lived in Newport your whole life and always wondered what went on at Doris Duke’s place? Now’s your chance! Residents of Newport, Middletown, and Portsmouth, Jamestown, Tiverton, and Little Compton are invited to roam around Rough Point and enjoy one of the best views in Newport. Whitehorne House Museum will also be open free to Newport County residents 10:00 am – 4:00 pm through the weekend.
Details Matter: Making Furniture Microscopic
Rough Point
June 18 / 5:00-7:00 pm
Tickets: $15
What happens when a dovetail joint shrinks down to a few thousands of an inch? Miniatures artist Bill Robertson shares the stories and secrets of his 42-year career building tiny objects inspired by historic interiors, furniture, and decorative arts. His unique approach brings the Townsends and Goddards into the 21st century.
For more information on events and to purchase tickets, visit www.newportrestoration.org/events.
by NRF User | Apr 19, 2019 | NRF News
Prescott Farm may be the best kept secret on Aquidneck Island. This 40-acre property is the largest open space park on the island and boasts not only multiple historic buildings, but also a rare double capacity windmill from 1812. Doris Duke purchased the property in 1969 with the intention of preserving the historic farmland and creating a space for a number of additional historic buildings that the Newport Restoration Foundation was in the process of rescuing from imminent demolition.
The only original building on the property is the impressive Nicholas-Overing House, built circa 1730. This formal 18th century building was home to the Overing family at the time of the American Revolution. British General Richard Prescott, the commander of the 6,000 British troops who occupied Newport during the Revolutionary War, decided to make the Overing’s house his country headquarters. It was here that Patriot commander Lt. Col. William Barton kidnapped General Prescott during a nighttime raid. Prescott was caught in only his night shirt and was not allowed to dress before being marched back to Narragansett Bay. This story spread rapidly and not only earned Prescott the nickname the Barefoot General but also resulted in Overing farm becoming colloquially known as Prescott Farm in homage to this early American victory.
Today Prescott Farm’s landscape harkens back to the rural Aquidneck Island of the 18th and 19th centuries, with gentle sloping land, fields lined with stonewalls and areas of scrub trees and brush. The farm is also home to both a kitchen garden and an herb garden which are tended to by a dedicated team from the University of Rhode Island’s Master Gardener program. These living laboratories marry colonial horticultural practices with more modern gardening techniques. Every year produce harvested from the gardens is donated to Lucy’s Hearth, a local women’s shelter on the island. Close to 700 pounds of food is donated every year.
The park is open year round daily from dawn until dusk. This season, Prescott Farm will be a site of community collaboration and engagement. During our new (and free!) Second Sunday programs, NRF will join forces with different community organizations across Aquidneck Island and beyond. These collaborations will highlight the expansive history and horticulture of the area as well as encourage exploration of the park’s nature trails, the historic windmill, and the work of URI’s Master Gardeners. Each month will feature a different community partner, theme, and activities.
NRF is excited to welcome Save the Bay for our next Second Sunday taking place on May 12 from 12:00 – 3:00 pm! They will be bringing their Traveling Touch Tank for visitors to get up close and personal with some new friends from the sea. Click here for more information about this program and upcoming monthly themes! Don’t miss this incredible opportunity to engage with your community and take advantage of Aquidneck Island’s best kept secret.
By Rachael Guadagni, Education & Public Engagement Assistant at Newport Restoration Foundation
by NRF User | Apr 17, 2019 | NRF News
I am pleased to announce that Newport Restoration Foundation is launching a monthly giving program – the Restoration Partners program – and I hope you will consider joining us in this new initiative. You may already be familiar with monthly giving programs, as there are many national charities and local organizations that have formalized, popular programs. Perhaps you are participating in one right now.
Monthly donors give automatically each month through their credit card or bank account. By participating in the Restoration Partners program, your monthly contribution can be directed immediately toward NRF’s ongoing work:
- To understand the impact of climate change and sea level rise on Newport and share what we learn with local citizens;
- To preserve some of Newport’s most important buildings, such as the William Vernon House, and assist with any unanticipated needs that arise from our stewardship;
- To provide unique opportunities for learning, such as our Preservation Pop-Ups, Stone Wall workshops, and Whitehorne House lectures, and foster a greater appreciation for the tradition of Colonial craftsmanship in Newport.
There are many advantages to joining the Restoration Partners program. Your monthly gift is fully tax-deductible and automatically charged to your credit card or bank account. As a Partner you will receive special benefits and invitations to private events. We will send you a year-end tax statement outlining your cumulative giving.
Just imagine what Newport would look like had our founder, Doris Duke, not invested in its architectural heritage? Members of the Restoration Partners program are vital in providing NRF with ongoing and consistent support to help us perpetuate Doris Duke’s legacy of preserving and protecting the cultural heritage of the city we love. As this is NRF’s 51st year of preserving Newport, our goal is to sign up at least 51 members of the community to participate in this new endeavor. We hope you will be among the first 51 to join us.
Please visit our website at www.newportrestoration.org/donate to learn more about the program and to make your gift. Thank you for supporting NRF and for caring about the work we do to preserve Newport’s unparalleled heritage.
Mark Thompson
Executive Director
by NRF User | Mar 21, 2019 | NRF News
At Rough Point, the questions asked most by visitors are not always about the priceless artworks, the architecture, or the history of the building. The questions most frequently asked are about the estate’s most recent owner: heiress, preservationist, and art collector, Doris Duke. The inquisitive interest in this unconventional heiress became the inspiration behind this year’s exhibition, Beyond Fortune: The Life & Legacy of Doris Duke.
Like many public figures, much of Doris’s life played out on the pages of tabloids and gossip columns, creating a popular memory of her made of half-truths that overshadow her unique character, commitment to historic preservation, and her generosity and patronage of a variety of charitable efforts. Visitors to the museum who already know of Doris Duke, and even those who do not, are always curious to learn more about her life outside of the spotlight.
This year’s exhibition poses the question, “What do we really know about Doris Duke?” Using historical documents and photographs from the Doris Duke Historical Archives at the David Rubenstein Library at Duke University and items from the Rough Point art and fashion collection, we are inviting visitors to learn more about Doris by looking honestly at her interests, complexities, and eccentricities to see beyond the myths and legends often associated with her life.
In anticipation of the exhibition, we have asked the staff to share six questions they receive most from visitors at Rough Point and their answers:
How old was Doris Duke when she inherited her fortune, and what was her net worth?
Doris Duke became the “richest little girl in the world” at the age of 12 when she inherited $80 million after the death of her father, the tobacco magnate, James B. Duke. When he passed, he set up a complex trust that provided her inheritance to be released in installments at ages 18, 21, and 25. When Doris died in 1993, her estate was worth $1.2 billion.
Was Doris Duke married?
Doris Duke married and divorced twice, and had several other serious relationships during her lifetime. Doris’s first husband, James Cromwell (1896-1990), was a divorcee and 16 years older when they met in 1929. They married in 1935 and divorced eight years later. Cromwell was politically ambitious and was named Ambassador to Canada by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1940. He ran unsuccessfully for US Senator from New Jersey in 1946. Doris’s second husband, Porfirio Rubirosa, was a Dominican diplomat and international playboy who married five times. They met in Rome in 1945 and married in September 1947—the pair divorced just a year later in October 1948.
Did Doris Duke have any children?
Doris had a daughter, Arden, who was born prematurely on July 11, 1940. Sadly, Arden only lived a day and Doris was unable to have other children. Based on telegrams and phone records from that time, Alec Cunningham-Reid was likely the father, not James Cromwell.
Doris Duke met Chandi Heffner in 1985 and felt a strong maternal connection to Her. She formally adopted Heffner in 1988. They maintained a familial relationship until 1990 when Doris Duke disinherited Heffner.
When did she live at Rough Point?
Although the Duke family purchased Rough Point in 1922, the family did not spend much time here between the late 1930s and the late 1950s. Beginning in 1958, Doris Duke re-occupied Rough Point and re-furnished the house. For the remainder of her life, Doris spent an extended “season” here at Rough
Point (from roughly April to November). She continued to refine the collection and the arrangement of the rooms at Rough Point throughout her life. Today, the museum features objects, furniture, and art selected, arranged, and used by Doris to make Rough Point a home.
Were there really camels at Rough Point?
In the late 1980s, Doris decided to purchase a Boeing 737 aircraft. As part of the negotiations it was agreed that the seller would include two Bactrian camels. Interestingly enough, Doris herself found two baby camels at the J.C. Schulz game farm in Catskill, New York and was reimbursed by the aircraft seller (since this was part of contractual legal obligation). That’s how in 1988, Baby and Princess came to live at Rough Point. Summers were spent in a tent on the terrace and they spent winters in a heated stable at Duke Farms. Contrary to popular rumors, no mysterious Sheiks were involved in acquiring the camels.
How did Doris Duke pass away?
In 1992, Doris broke her hip, then had both knees replaced in early 1993, and suffered a stroke in July 1993. She died at home in Beverly Hills, CA on October 28, 1993 at the age of 80. The official cause of death was progressive pulmonary edema, leading to cardiac arrest.
Do you have more questions about Doris Duke? Visit Rough Point this year as we tackle many more ideas and myths about her life in the exhibition and our public programming throughout the season. Beyond Fortune: The Life & Legacy of Doris Duke will be on exhibit in the galleries at Rough Point Museum from Tuesday, April 2, through Sunday, November 17, 2019. The museum is open Tuesday – Sunday, from 10:00 am to 5:00 pm and Wednesdays until 7:00 pm beginning April 2. Click here to plan your visit today!
Photo courtesy of Doris Duke Charitable Foundation Historical Archives, David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Duke University, Durham, North Carolina.
by CC:S MY | Mar 3, 2019 | NRF News
As a scholar of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, but one who has—until recently—had little opportunity to spend time in New England, I have developed a particular, though less than fully informed, vision of the wealthy women and men who called Newport their summer home and what their so-called summer cottages must have looked like. In my mind’s eye, the people of the past who called Bellevue Avenue their summer home have always appeared to me as a fairly uniform lot of stern looking men in dark suits and elegantly attired, but severely corseted, women with elaborate hairdos. When I have allowed myself the time to imagine the Bellevue Avenue homes, I have conjured up images of first floors filled with an endless series of grand rooms, each with sweeping views of the Atlantic and geometrically perfect parquet floors. Upstairs I imagined bedrooms covered in heavy rugs and carpeting and windows covered and framed in even heavier drapery. In short, I always envisioned the Bellevue Avenue Historic District and its former residents as archetypes of the Gilded Age and the Progressive era. That all changed the first time I saw Doris Duke’s bedroom.
If you’ve never seen the room before, please take a look at the images that accompany this blog. It is extraordinary. I first saw it in person during my final interview for the Director of Museums position at the NRF, and it quickly became my favorite room at Rough Pont (still is). Bright yellow walls (originally painted purple) serve as an exciting visual counterpoint to brilliant purple curtains. The room is filled with exquisite furniture upholstered in similarly vibrant purple fabrics and oftentimes faced with the most remarkably iridescent mother of pearl—a favorite decorative material of Doris Duke’s both here at Rough Point and in her Shangri La home in Hawaii. Despite the age of the pieces, most of which date to the nineteenth century, the visual impact of the room suggests a particular vision of modernity and fashion quite familiar to those of us born and raised in the second half of the twentieth-century, which is when Miss Duke decorated the room. Her choices of fabric and furniture created a visual aesthetic that linked the past and her present in surprising and visually stunning ways.
Doris Duke lived at Rough Point off and on until about a year before her death in 1993. At the Newport Restoration Foundation, we are deeply committed to sharing with visitors a sense of how Miss Duke lived at Rough Point over the last few decades of her life. Consequently, our collections, as well as the ways in which we exhibit them, often juxtapose the design and collecting practices of the Gilded Age and Progressive era (her parents’ generation) with the lived experience of an entirely different age. In some sense, Rough Point is the place where the 1880s and 90s meet the 1980s and 90s, and this mixing of centuries proves quite evident in Doris Duke’s Bedroom, which includes items like a delicate and deeply expressive Renoir painting of a young woman from 1875 and an AT&T Merlin telephone system (an iconic business phone system of the 1980s and a frequent feature in the rooms at Rough Point).
Pierre-Auguste Renoir (French, 1841-1919), Jeune fille blonde cousant, 1875, 1999.496.
To my mind, this linking of past and present, or at least the linking of a more and less distant past, is what distinguishes Rough Point from many of its neighboring historic home tours, and I am pleased to say that when one reads the online reviews, our visitors find the same thing to be true. Former visitors’ reviews note that we’re not like the other mansions on Bellevue. While visitors to Newport are powerfully impressed by the grandeur of the neighboring mansions (as well they should), they note that our home, Rough Point, feels more accessible and more relatable. Perhaps my favorite review noted that Rough Point was “the only mansion that we actually felt like we could live in.”
As someone who spends most of his working days at Rough Point, I think I understand what that reviewer was trying to say. Despite its grandeur and extraordinary beauty, there’s a sense of hominess at Rough Point, a wonderful, comfortable feeling that comes from the pairing of extraordinary works of European art and furniture from a more distant past with the mundane artifacts of day to day life in the mid to late 20th century. That duality, if you will, is directly attributable to Miss Duke and the life that she lived at Rough Point. You can find examples of this throughout the house, from the kitchen, which displays a lively pairing of late 20th century appliances with amenities from earlier in the century (including a sizeable, porcelain-tiled humidor built around 1900 to accommodate “Buck” Duke’s considerable cigar habit); to the pine room, which boasts an 18th century mirror (purchased in a Paris flea market!) and a Sony reel to reel tape recorder from the second half of the 20th century; and of course to Miss Duke’s bedroom, my favorite room at Rough Point.
Humidor, Wilke Manufacturing Company, Anderson, Indiana (American, 1897-1905). United States, ca. 1900. Porcelain tiles, nickel, wood, P2018.1.
The Pine Room at Rough Point
I hope that you’ll find the time to visit Rough Point this season and see these rooms (and many others) for yourself. While I encourage everyone to view our website, which shares some images of each room on display, there really is no substitute for experiencing the home in person. Whether you visit the mansion physically or virtually, I encourage you to share your favorite room with us on social media by using the hashtag #myfavoriteroomatrp. I look forward to seeing your photographs and comments.
By Erik Greenberg, Ph.D., Director of Museums, Newport Restoration Foundation
by CC:S MY | Feb 14, 2019 | NRF News
Hearts may not have been one of Doris Duke’s favorite design motifs, but heart shapes can be found in several places throughout her Newport estate. In honor of Valentine’s Day, we’re taking a closer look at some of the hidden hearts in the fine and decorative arts collection at Rough Point.
A Desk to Adore
Desk and bookcase
Lima, Peru, 18th century
Spanish cedar, mother of pearl, tortoiseshell, ivory, rosewood
Doris Duke’s bedroom features her deep love for mother of pearl furniture. From the bed to the nightstands, to the seating and tables, the room is a pearlescent dream, with accents of purple, of course! However, the Peruvian mother of pearl desk is especially stunning. The desk features a scalloped pediment above a pair of cabinet doors enclosing shelves. The interior is veneered with stars and parquetry, and above a slant front enclosing, six short drawers are inlaid with ivory hearts. When opening the chest, these little hearts are quite the pleasant surprise!
A Heart of Silver
Heart Shaped Dish
Tiffany & Company (founded 1837), 20th century
Sterling silver
Doris Duke was often the most generous to those closest to her. While we do not know the giver of this gift or the reason for such thanks, we can only guess that Miss Duke extended a kindness to “Paul” in a way that was worthy of such a beautiful thank you. The inscription says, “Doris, you are a truly great friend. Love, Paul”. A keepsake of Doris’, this Tiffany & Co. heart shaped dish is stored safely in the collection archives at Rough Point.
Are You Pin-terested?
Heart Shaped Pincushion
Tiffany & Company, ca. 1900
18-karat gold base
Another Tiffany & Co. piece from the collection, the base of this heart-shaped pincushion is made of 18-karat gold, while the cushion is made of silk with cotton interior stuffing. It is part of a 14-piece Tiffany dressing set that once belonged to Doris Duke’s mother, Nanaline. Currently it is located in Doris’ personal bathroom in her bedroom at Rough Point, along with rest of the dressing set.
A Dish to Die For
Heart Shaped Dish
ca. 1902
Enamel and copper
Long live the king! This enamel dish with copper latticework is actually a souvenir from the 1902 coronation of British monarchs King Edward VII and Queen Alexandra. It is unknown where Doris Duke acquired it, but this elegant dish also sits in the bathroom of her bedroom at Rough Point.
Want to learn more about the collections at Rough Point? Visit newportrestoration.org/roughpoint/collection or find Newport Restoration Foundation at newportalri.org!
