Gilded: How Newport Became America's Richest Resort by Deborah Davis

Author:Deborah Davis [Davis, Deborah]
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Tags: History, General
ISBN: 9780470730249
Google: PoBRAUL8mpUC
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
Published: 2009-09-25T00:00:00+00:00

As much as the media liked to play up the fact that Timmy and Julia were simple folk, the siblings were not completely unsophisticated. At one point during Mrs. Van Rennselaer’s campaign to beautify the Sullivans and their property, she volunteered financial assistance. “I offered to clothe them, fix up their home and paint it and send them on a trip to Florida if they would clean up that disgusting mess,” she said. Timmy and Julia knew better than to accept because she wanted to send them south in the summer. No one goes to Florida in the summer, sniffed the Sullivans.

Finally, the fire marshal ruled that if the Sullivans removed all hazards from the area, including mattresses and other flammable waste, there would be no need for a hearing. Timmy and Julia had won a “John Doe” victory against the bossy upper class. Chairman James T. Kaull of the Board of Review explained that even in scenic Newport, the city’s demolition law could not be invoked against unsightliness. “If you live across the street from me and want to paint your house red, white, and blue, it may look like the dickens, but there’s nothing I can do about it,” he said with a sigh.

Newporters who protested the high profile eyesores created by the Coogans and the Sullivans could argue that in these instances the culprits were “not our crowd” outsiders. The Coogans, for all their money, were social rejects, and the Sullivans hailed from a completely different class. But Newport in the 1940s had a more serious problem than a few colorful gate-crashers. America’s richest resort was rotting from within.

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