by Janine L. Weisman, Rhode Island Current
June 1, 2023
You don’t actually have to scale the chain link fence and venture through prickly bushes to get inside the dilapidated stable and carriage house at Brenton Point State Park in Newport. Just go to YouTube.
Online you’ll find several videos showing the graffiti-covered walls and scattered chunks of concrete debris inside what’s left of the two-story structure built in 1906. A hole in the roof of The Bells as seen from inside.
Clearly, risk-taking videographers have been undeterred by the fence and the no-trespassing signs put up by the Rhode Island Department of Environmental Management, which owns the property. So were four boys, ages 12 to 16, who scaled the fence and entered the property on the afternoon of Memorial Day. One of the boys climbed onto the roof, which collapsed under his weight. Three of the boys were seriously injured and taken to Providence hospitals, according to DEM.
The ruins of the stable and carriage house building have been a public safety concern for years. So why is it still there in a state park, easily accessible at the end of a wide gravel road?
Right next to the ruins is a stone observation tower open to the public, offering an aerial view of tree branches poking through the roof and exposed rusty steel trusses.
Montalvo used to venture inside the old stable and carriage house with her boyfriend and friends back in the early 1990s when she was in high school. The Bells still had a roof intact back then, she said.
“You want to go in there. There’s something there that drives you to it — the adventure, going back in time,” said JudyAnn Montalvo, 48, of Bristol as she stood atop the observation tower Tuesday morning.
“No wonder why the teenagers were in there,” Montalvo added as she gazed down at The Bells. “Of course, now I know not to go into there. It’s dangerous. These kids now, now they’re impulsive. They’re going to take these risks, just like yesterday.” Graffiti throughout the interior of the structure clearly show it is popular with trespassers.
Adventurers record themselves trespassing
In one YouTube video, a bold videographer includes a shot of the no trespassing sign on the property, then observes that the stairs to the second floor are missing. He finds a way to hoist himself up through a hole in the ceiling anyway, then observes the “huge chunks of concrete” that have fallen through from the roof.
In another video posted three months ago, a woman records herself climbing up on a stone wall, going over the chain link fence and walking around inside The Bells, marveling at all the graffiti on the walls and floor.
The allure of this place proved irresistible for four boys on Monday, leading to multiple 911 calls that brought first responders from Newport, Middletown and Naval Station Newport to the park shortly before 4 p.m.
One 15-year-old boy was medi-flighted to Rhode Island Hospital in Providence. Two others, ages 15 and 16, were brought by rescue to Hasbro Children’s Hospital. The other boy, age 12, was treated at the scene and released to his parents. The names of the boys have not been released and information about their conditions is unavailable. Holes in the roof of the 1906 stable and carriage house are viewed from atop the nearby tower at Brenton Point State Park in Newport. Despite a fence surrounding the dilapidated structure, the graffiti is evidence that people continue to trespass.
Study conducted to rule out alternative options
After some concrete roof panels collapsed two years ago, DEM proposed demolishing the building because of public safety concerns. Since the property is located in the Ocean Drive Historic District, a National Historic Landmark District, DEM’s Division of Planning and Development requested a review by the Rhode Island Historical Preservation and Heritage Commission (HPHC). Staff from both agencies met on site on Feb. 12, 2021, to assess the condition of the building, according to a letter the HPHC sent to DEM three days later which was obtained by Rhode Island Current.
At the time, HPHC staff said the stable and carriage house were not in imminent danger of collapse and asked DEM to commission an engineering study to prove there was no prudent alternative to demolition. That study, conducted by Pare Corporation, concluded that it would cost $1.05 million just to stabilize the building or $2.4 million to return it to a structurally sound condition.
Neither option, however, would have put the stable and carriage house back into use, said Jeffrey D. Emidy, HPHC executive director and interim state historic preservation officer. HPHC concluded that demolition was the most appropriate course of action, according to a letter sent to DEM in July 2022.
“We came around to the determination that the only prudent alternative was to actually demolish the building,” Emidy told Rhode Island Current.
Before the building can be torn down, however, HPHC requested that DEM officials prepare a memorandum of agreement outlining steps it would take to mitigate the loss of the property.
“It’s a historic resource within a National Register of Historic Places and National Historic Landmark District,” Emidy said. “You can’t just take a historic property down and not do anything.”
Mitigation measures could involve recording and archiving information about the property before its demolition, putting up interpretive signs or other initiatives to educate the public about the site’s unique history. An undated postcard shows the manor house on the estate known as ‘The Reef.’ The house was vacant and dilapidated when it was destroyed by fire in 1960.
History of ‘The Reef’
The stable and carriage house was once part of a grand estate built in 1881 designed by Boston architects Sturgis and Brigham. Famed for its gardens and greenhouses, the estate was known as “The Reef” and owned by Theodore M. Davis. A wealthy lawyer and businessman, Davis funded and oversaw the excavation of the Valley of the Kings in Egypt between 1902 and 1913. At the time of his death in Miami at age 78 on Feb. 23, 1915, news reports said Davis kept some of his priceless relics of ancient Egypt in his Newport home, including an alabaster reproduction of the head of one queen, which he had found in her tomb.
The property was purchased in 1923 by automobile executive Milton J. Budlong, then abandoned in 1941 when it served as an anti-aircraft battery site with guns hidden among its shrubbery. The vacant main house was destroyed by fire on July 16, 1960, and it was completely razed two years later.
By that time, state legislators and the governor had been calling for making the tip of Ocean Drive a state park. Federal match funding helped the state acquire the open space with a commanding view of the ocean in 1969. It became Brenton Point State Park, named after colonial Governor William Brenton, in 1976.
Memorandum in editing process
DEM staff drafted a memorandum in response to the HPHC request last February. The memorandum is in the process of being edited by both DEM’s Bureau of Natural Resources and Division of Planning and Development and HPHC and should be completed in a month, DEM spokesman Michael Healey said.
Because of the Memorial Day incident, Healey said demolition planning is now going to be expedited.
“It sped up the correspondence between HPHC and DEM and moved this to a high priority for both organizations,” Healey said.
What took so long to get to this point?
After HPHC agreed to demolishing The Bells last July, Healey said it took a few months to coordinate a meeting so DEM officials could better understand what “mitigation” meant. DEM received a template from HPHC from another project to use as a starting point to help move the project forward, Healey said.
Healey said DEM plans to create an archival record including photographs and videography to ensure that preservationists/historians can observe the structure after it’s been demolished. Another remediation step will be installing interpretative signage connecting the site to the Ocean Drive Historic District.
“We will include our budget estimate in the mitigation plan that we are working on,” Healey said.
No meetings have been scheduled since the incident on Monday, but conversations have occurred, Healey said. He estimated that the demolition could start in three months.
“Importantly, the demolition doesn’t necessarily have to wait until the mitigation is complete,” Healey added. “If we have the memorandum of agreement in place and have an archival record of the Bells in a manner that HPHC feels is adequate to document the current state of the site, we can move forward with the demolition.”
In addition to approval from HPHC, DEM must obtain a permit from the Rhode Island Department of Health because the structure contains asbestos, and meet Department of Administration purchasing guidelines for contracting with a vendor for demolition.
“Where we are right now is what is in this conversation of what is the mitigation going to be,” Emidy said. “That conversation has been fits and starts. That’s kind of the way it’s gone. They send us a letter. A little time goes by, we send a letter back. Sometimes we’re faster to respond than others. That’s on us.”
No one wants another tragic incident, Emidy said.
“We don’t want this to happen again. We didn’t want it to happen once and I’m sure the DEM feels the same,” Emidy said.
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