12.20.99
The East Bay Century -- 100 Years of Highlights

• 1900
  For the next decade, the emergence of the automobile provides a metaphor of things to come in Newport. Trolleys replace passenger cars, and ferries give way to bridges. By 1900, car makers had sold 4,192 cars around Aquidneck Island. In 1910, car makers sold 181,000 vehicles on the island.
  
  
• 1907
  The career of the steamer that carries tourists and produce across Mt. Hope Bay to Little Compton is cut short when it hits the rocks near the wharf at Sakonnet Point.
  
  
• 1910
  The tail end of America's Industrial Revolution hits Bristol in the second decade of the century with a wave of expansion and economic growth. The population nearly doubles, from about 6,000 to 11,000. As families go to work, sons go off to fight in World War I. Bristol sends 261 men to fight in Europe.
  
  For more than 20 years, Newport's African-American community has flourished at a hillside neighborhood by Division Street, the home of the Union Congregational Church and the hub for black families, businesses and intellectuals. The church, where the babies of former slaves were baptized, has its roots in the nation's oldest society, formed in 1780 by free men to grapple with social and economic issues, the African Union Society.
  
  
• 1919
  The Bristol-based Herreshoff Manufacturing Co., known for its boat-building prowess, flies into history on May 27, as a Navy flying boat, the NC-4, skips along the waters of the Tagus River in Lisbon, Portugal, becoming the first plane to complete the 2,150-nautical-mile transatlantic flight.
  
  
• 1925
  A fire in Newport City Hall on March 24 consumes the third floor, destroys the cupola and causes $200,000 in damage, ruining the City Council chambers and the Board of Health laboratory. City Hall reopens in 1927 with a new cupola, its golden dome recognizable today.
  
  
• 1929
  Aquidneck Island is linked to Bristol on Oct. 24 with the opening of the Mount Hope Bridge, built with 2,620 miles of steel wire and 40,000 cubic yards of concrete. The largest suspension bridge in New England at the time, the 6,130-foot-long bridge, with its 285-foot towers, opens to pedestrians, cars and horse-drawn buggies.
  
  
• 1934
  The Atlantic Fleet, which had called Newport home during summer and fall since 1900, starts to pull out for Norfolk, Va.
  
  Newport is described as the "yachting capital of the world'' by the Associated Press on Sept. 11 in the wake of the second of three successful defenses of the America's Cup in this decade by Harold S. Vanderbilt. From a private yacht, President Roosevelt watches the Cup races between Vanderbilt's Rainbow and the British challenger Endeavour.
  
  
• 1938
  The Great Gale devastates East Bay, wiping out many well-loved landmarks, including the Island Park Amusement Park in Portsmouth. What was for a brief time the hub of life in town is turned into a heap of wood and rubble.
  
  
• 1940
  Herreshoff Manufacturing Co. builds 100 vessels for the Atlantic fleet and helps lift Bristol out of the Depression. The end of the war, however, was the beginning of the end of Herreshoff. In the summer of 1945, the waterfront construction shops were knocked down.
  
  
• 1941
  President Franklin D. Roosevelt declares war on Japan on Dec. 8. In the war years, Newport and the surrounding region were home to more than a dozen Navy commands. The Naval Torpedo Station on Goat Island employed 13,000 civilian workers who toiled in three round-the-clock shifts, making it the state's largest employer. The Torpedo Station produced 80 percent of the torpedoes used by the Navy in World Wars I and II.
  
  
• 1950
  Over the next decade, the population of Barrington grows from 8,200 to nearly 14,000, the biggest leap since the town first registered residents in 1774, and marks its transformation into a suburb.
  
  
• 1953
  Massachusetts Sen. Jack Kennedy marries Jacqueline Bouvier on Sept. 12 at St. Mary Church in Newport. The reception is held at Hammersmith Farm, later a summer White House for the future president.
  
  
• 1954
  Under a full moon, the Newport Jazz Festival debuts on July 17 at the Newport Casino, adding luster to the city's international reputation and becoming a potent force in American culture.
  
  Hurricane Carol slams into East Bay on Aug. 31, destroying the Stone Bridge linking Tiverton and Portsmouth.
  
  
• 1956
  Duke Ellington and His Orchestra deliver a stunning performance at the Newport Jazz Festival on July 7, prompting a reappraisal of the composer/bandleader's extraordinary career.
  
  
• 1965
  Bob Dylan, the most important figure in the folk revival, switches his acoustic guitar for an electric one with a band on July 25 at the Newport Folk Festival, in its seventh year. The act infuriates traditionalists and signals the start of a new era in popular music.
  
  
• 1968
  On Aug. 21, Gov. John H. Chafee opens Colt State Park in Bristol, a 460-acre waterfront estate purchased in 1965 for $600,000.
  
  
• 1969
  The Newport Bridge, linking Newport and Jamestown, opens on June 28, relegating ferry service to history.
  
  The Bristol campus of Roger Williams College, renamed Roger Williams University in 1992, opens on Sept. 29.
  
  
• 1973
  The Navy announces in April that it will transfer the Atlantic cruiser-destroyer fleet from Newport to southern ports. About 13,000 sailors on 40 vessels will be dispersed, signaling a new era for Newport.
  
  
• 1976
  Tall Ships arrive in Newport Harbor on June 26 for the nation's Bicentennial celebration, luring thousands to the city for six days and marking its growing importance as a tourist destination.
  
  
• 1978
  Amon A. Jamiel, the popular owner of the House of Million Items in Warren, is gunned down on March 19 in his Miller Street home. The murder remains unsolved at millennium's end.
  
  

• von Bulow

  1982
  Danish-born socialite Claus von Bulow is convicted on March 16 by a Newport Superior Court jury of trying to kill his wife, Martha "Sunny'' von Bulow, by injecting her with insulin. The verdict would be overturned on appeal. After a second trial, von Bulow was acquitted June 10, 1985.
  
  
• 1986
  Construction begins on May 22 on the East Bay Bicycle Path, a scenic 14.5-mile ribbon from Providence to Bristol Harbor completed in May 1992.
  
  
• 1988
  Little Compton police and federal agents on March 15 seize the Long Highway house of a suspected drug smuggler, a bust that would help lead to the conviction of 56 people in an operation that reached from Pakistan to Point Judith. A share of the forfeited assets will net the Police Department more than $1 million.
  
  
• 1989
  Portsmouth voters on May 23 approve the town purchase of the 90-acre Glen Farm for $3.6 million.
  
  
• 1991
  Voters in Bristol and Warren vote on Sept. 11 to merge the towns' schools into a regional district.
  
  
• 1993
  Christopher Hightower, a former Sunday school teacher at the Barrington Congregational Church and a self-employed commodities broker, is convicted on April 4 of killing Ernest and Alice Brendel and their 8-year-old daughter Emily. He is sentenced June 8 to life without parole.
  
  
• 1994
  Cool Moose Party gubernatorial candidate Robert J. Healey Jr. of Barrington, a lawyer and former chairman of the Warren School Committee well known for his long hair and beard, receives just over 9 percent of the vote on Nov. 8. The Cool Moose Party thus qualifies for official standing, getting its own column on the ballot.
  
  
• 1998
  On Dec. 17, the Bristol County Water Authority opens the valves that bring water from the Scituate Reservoir to its 15,700 customers in Barrington, Warren and Bristol.
  
  
• 1999
  The Tiverton Land Trust announces plans to buy the beautiful, 236-acre Matta Farm for $1.2 million.
  
  

A yearlong Providence Journal series about life in Rhode Island.
Produced in cooperation with the Rhode Island Historical Society.