The Boston Globe’s weekly Ocean State Innovators column features a Q&A with Rhode Island innovators who are starting new businesses and nonprofits, conducting groundbreaking research, and reshaping the state’s economy. Send tips and suggestions to reporter Alexa Gagosz at alexa.gagosz@globe.com.
In the mid-1920s, Doris Duke — an American billionaire tobacco heiress, socialite, and philanthropist — was barely in her teens when her father died unexpectedly and she inherited Rough Point mansion in Newport. The English manor wrapped in stone was located along the ocean’s edge at the tip of Bellevue Avenue, and already had a storied history. It was first constructed in the late 1880s and early 1890s by Frederick W. Vanderbilt, a railroad tycoon, as one of the family’s summer “cottages.”
It wasn’t until the late 1950s that Duke reestablished a seasonal residence there. After growing up known as the “richest little girl in the world,” she founded the Newport Restoration Foundation, which has spent nearly five decades preserving early housing stock, including more than 80 18th- and early 19th-century Colonial homes around Newport. Former First Lady Jackie Kennedy served as NRF’s vice president.
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When Duke died in 1993 at age 80, she left Rough Point mansion, along with millions from her estate, to the foundation to continue carrying out her passion for preservation. Franklin “Frankie” Vagnone, NRF’s current president, is steering in that direction, and finding new ways to preserve some of the seaside city’s historic properties that are increasingly facing the effects of climate change.
Q. What is the Newport Restoration Foundation?
Vagnone: The Newport Restoration Foundation was originally founded as an economic and community redevelopment organization. In the 1970s, it purchased around 70 Colonial houses that were not in great shape, and totally stopped them from being completely demolished and redeveloped. We’ve continued maintaining those houses and are still renting them out. When Doris Duke passed away, she left her home [Rough Point mansion in Newport] to the Foundation, and it’s where all of our offices are located, is open to the public as a museum, and is the central place for us to do this work.
Q. How is the NRF thinking about the intersection of climate change and historic restoration?
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A. A few ways: NRF has been working with the city of Newport in formulating elevation guidelines for historic homes that are in flood plain areas now hit hard by climate change. We’re also establishing a co-stewardship historic easement program, which will include responses to climate change effects. And we’re running a pilot project to track the carbon footprint and energy use in our historic home rentals. This will help us determine ways to introduce energy-saving concepts without compromising the historic fabric.
We also have an initiative called “Keeping History Above Water,” where we are working with groups across the United States in creating conferences on preservation and climate change. Up to this point, we’ve had 10 conferences over the last decade where we are bringing in scholars to discuss how preservation is particularly and uniquely affected by climate change.
Q. How is climate change impacting Rough Point?
A. Rough Point mansion is located on the farthest point of the island. We experience heavy seas with increased strengths of storms and winds. It’s a stone building with plaster interiors and leaded windows. All of these things fail and we’re getting water infiltration in the house in ways that we never have before. Now the winds are so strong that it’s blowing through the storm windows and into the leaded glass, into the inside. These are things we are dealing with all of the time that are fairly unique, compared to the issues we were dealing with even 25 or 30 years ago.
Q. How are you putting these effects of climate change on display?
A. One of the things we’ve done is instead of hiding or covering up the damage that climate change is actively causing on the mansion, we’re using it by exposing it and interpreting it. So if we have water infiltration and plaster is falling down, while we are restoring that area we are pointing it out to visitors with plaques and information, showing how Rough Point is this physical manifestation of how preservation is having to deal with the effects of climate change.
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Q. How is this unique compared to other historic preservation sites?
A. Before I came to NRF a few years ago, I was running the Historic House Trust of New York City. At the end, I wrote a book called the “Anarchist’s Guide to Historic House Museums,” where I wrote about how visitors are interested in the process of preservation. But my real frustration with historical sites is they rarely actually address current issues in ways that our visitors can relate to. So I came to Rough Point and NRF with this particular concept of opening up the doors and sharing absolutely everything with our visitors. I don’t want to keep anything from them.
Q. What kind of investment does it take to prevent climate change from destroying some of the historic mansions along the seacoast in Newport, including Rough Point?
A. I have an architectural background and some of the details in architecture that might have been fine 150 years ago might be failing now because of increased wind and storms. We really don’t know until these things start to fail, and we have no choice but to look at them in unique ways. Some historic sites are being pressured to pick up their house and move it backwards. In other cases, I’ve seen videos of houses right on the shore that are being washed away in these new storms. We’re lucky to not be dealing with that at Rough Point.
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Q. NRF also has a workforce development program for carpenters, general contractors, and others to learn about the art of historic preservation. Why do you think this program is necessary?
A. New England is chock full of historic buildings, and they’re not all period museums. Many people around New England live in old houses, and all of these houses have a specific kind of construction that needs to continue holding up in really strong winters and very hot summers. These factors make New England a viable spot to figure out ways in which contractors and preservationists can start to unify.
Q. Who should take part in this training, and what are the benefits?
A. Our preservation training is trying to locate the best group of people to train on how to look at, for instance, wood windows in Colonial buildings or masonry repointing. Experienced contractors already are doing this work because they want to elevate their skills, but we’re looking at high school training programs for emerging workers.
Being trained in preservation has very real effects on workers’ bottom lines. These skills can help people get better jobs and better pay. So the work we are doing with the training is not just about preservation. It’s a lot about workforce training and producing the potential for betterment in the people who come through the program.
Alexa Gagosz can be reached at alexa.gagosz@globe.com. Follow her @alexagagosz and on Instagram @AlexaGagosz.