Newport Summer School
Did you know you can study architecture, art, landscape and preservation in summer school? Ryan has just returned from a ten-day summer school program. Anyone can apply to three different schools. Here’s what you need to know…
Richard Guy Wilson points out a detail in a stained glass window by John LaFarge.
The Victorian Society in America (VSA) operates three summer schools: Newport, Chicago and London. The VSA is correct when they claim the programs are internationally acclaimed as students from other countries attend the schools.
Ryan just finished the 2022 Newport Summer School lead by Richard Guy Wilson, also internationally acclaimed as an architecture historian. This year’s class was Richard’s thirty-fourth school in Newport.
The VSA summer schools are competitive. You must apply and be accepted to attend so there’s a process to navigate. We hope that will become easier since the schools are no longer paused due to the pandemic.
Ryan’s class was twenty-four students with a couple of instructors, many guest lecturers and many property owners who made presentations. The majority of students were from the United States though there were also students from England, the Netherlands, the Czech Republic and Hungary.
Students range in age from mid-twenties to early eighties. You don’t need to be an architect or work in a trade related to architecture to attend - you can just appreciate architecture.
The great hall in The Breakers (built 1893 - 1895).
The Newport Summer School includes some of the “white elephants” of Newport - the enormous Gilded Age mansions for which Newport is well known. Lord Julian Fellowes (author of Downton Abbey and The Guilded Age) will be hosted in the great hall of The Breakers next month. Tickets sold out within twenty-four hours.
Isaac Bell House (designed 1883).
The Newport Summer School visited many smaller houses that inspired styles constructed across the United States. The Isaac Bell House by celebrated firm McKim Mead and White remains one of the best examples of the so-called “shingle style” homes in America.
The Colony House (center) sits at the top of Washington Square in Newport (built 1739).
Students of the summer school tour buildings that were constructed more than one hundred years before the Guilded Age mansions in an effort to understand the design and preservation challenges of America’s oldest buildings. The Colony House is the fourth oldest statehouse still standing in the United States. It was designed by Thomas Monday who also designed the nearby Trinity Church, founded in 1698.
Benedict Leca, Executive Director of the Redwood Library and Athenaeum, speaks to students (built 1747).
When the Redwood Library was built, there was Harvard, Yale and the Redwood Library. The Library’s history page captures it’s incredible perseverance very well:
The Redwood Library and Athenaeum is America’s first purpose-built library (1747), and the oldest continuously operating in its original location. As such, it is the only remaining secular public cultural institution in this country with an unbroken link to the colonial period and the Nation’s founding. Housed in the earliest public Neoclassic building in the U.S., and containing Rhode Island’s first art gallery (1875), it has functioned for nearly three-hundred years as Newport’s intellectual core, a humanities center and civic learning hub styled after ideals of ancient Athenian culture and philosophy.
As an athenaeum — an interdisciplinary ‘think space’ comprising a library, museum, and research center — the Redwood is home to exceptional collections. The Library contains 200,000 volumes, with particular strengths in early American history and material culture, early modern architecture, decorative arts and garden design, eighteenth-century European illustrated books, and the history of Newport and Rhode Island.
Some 2022 Newport Summer School students at The Mooring for dinner after a long day of classes.
There are many early examples of early American architecture in and around the Newport area that inspired buildings throughout the United States. There are examples of houses that were the first of their kind in America and served as the roof for architectural styles still known today.
Apart from meeting and studying with a great group of people, students may continue to research topics about which they learned during the school. For example, the school gave Ryan a deeper appreciation for early American craftsmanship of furniture and the decorative arts.
While both of those could be entire degrees in themselves, it will be interesting to research them further. Ryan is particularly interested in how the architecture styles of the Victorian Era are being reborn in today’s architecture with names like “new traditional” - a mix of old styles with new technology and more simplified details.
Ryan recommends attending the Newport Summer School, especially before Richard Guy Wilson retires from directing the school. He’s also considering applying to both the Chicago and London schools.
Please comment below with any questions about the program Ryan attended. We’d also like to know if you were already aware of the Victorian Society in America or the summer school programs. Would consider attending?
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