May 2013

Public Art Project Honors the Effect of Historic Preservation in the City by the Sea 

May 31, Newport, RI – ‘The Meeting Room,’ an installation by world –renowned artist and architect Maya Lin, was dedicated and opened to the public today in Newport’s Queen Anne Square. The Doris Duke Monument Foundation (DDMF), an offshoot of the Newport Restoration Foundation (NRF), presented the installation and revitalized park to the City of Newport as a gift in honor of the memory of philanthropist Doris Duke. Duke championed Newport’s historic preservation and left an enduring legacy of historic architecture. The installation also honors the effect of historic preservation as a catalyst for community revitalization.

The Concept 

The Doris Duke Monument Foundation (DDMF), an offshoot of the Newport Restoration Foundation (NRF), has delivered an installation at Queen Anne Square in Newport, RI, with a dual purpose. It was created to honor the memory of Doris Duke, who championed Newport’s historic preservation and left an enduring legacy of historic architecture; and created to honor the effect of historic preservation as a catalyst for community revitalization.

By the early 1970s, the area now known as Queen Anne Square was a downtown urban space filled with a wide variety of buildings which were mostly commercial, and many of which were of little note. Some of these structures were largely abandoned. Within the boundaries of the block lay historic Trinity Church, almost completely hidden by the surrounding commercial development. In essence the area had always been a dense urban place even as early as the mid-18th-century. Its appearance by the 70s was oddly misused, compared with its long history of commercial vitality in the heart of the city.