The city sank
into oblivion, and for over thirty years not a house was built
there.
It was not until near 1840 that the Middletons and Izzards and
other wealthy and aristocratic Southern families were tempted to
Newport by the climate and the facilities it offered for bathing,
shooting and boating. A boarding-house or two sufficed for the
modest wants of the new-comers, first among which stood the
Aquidneck, presided over by kind Mrs. Murray. It was not until
some years later, when New York and Boston families began to
appreciate the place, that the first hotels were built, - the
Atlantic on the square facing the old mill, the Bellevue and
Fillmore on Catherine Street, and finally the original Ocean House,
destroyed by fire in 1845 and rebuilt as we see it to-day. The
croakers of the epoch considered it much too far out of town to be
successful, for at its door the open fields began, a gate there
separating the town from the country across which a straggling,
half-made road, closed by innumerable gates, led along the cliffs
and out across what is now the Ocean Drive. The principal roads at
that time led inland; any one wishing to drive seaward had to
descend every two or three minutes to open a gate. The youth of
the day discovered a source of income in opening and closing these
for pennies.
Fashion had decreed that the correct hour for dancing was 11 A.
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