Native Americans lived around Narragansett Bay for thousands of years before English settlers began arriving in the early 17th century. Rhode Island was unique among the Thirteen British Colonies in having been founded by a refugee, Roger Williams, who fled religious persecution in the Massachusetts Bay Colony to establish a haven for religious liberty. He founded Providence in 1636 on land purchased from local tribes, creating the first settlement in North America with an explicitly secular government. The Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations subsequently became a destination for religious and political dissenters and social outcasts, earning it the moniker "Rogue's Island".
Rhode Island was the first colony to call for a Continental Congress, in 1774, and the first to renounce its allegiance to the British Crown, on May 4, 1776. After the American Revolution, during which it was heavily occupied and contested, Rhode Island became the fourth state to ratify the Articles of Confederation, on February 9, 1778. Because its citizens favored a weaker central government, it boycotted the 1787 convention that had drafted the United States Constitution, which it initially refused to ratify; it finally ratified it on May 29, 1790, the last of the original 13 states to do so.
The state was officially named the State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations since the colonial era but came to be commonly known as "Rhode Island". In November 2020, the state's voters approved an amendment to the state constitution formally dropping "and Providence Plantations" from its full name. Its official nickname is the "Ocean State", a reference to its 400 mi (640 km) of coastline and the large bays and inlets that make up about 14% of its area. (Full article...)
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Art's Auto
Art's Auto is a historic former service station at 5–7 Lonsdale Avenue in Pawtucket, Rhode Island. It is a single-story brick structure with a flat roof and a series of towers capped by pointed roofs. It was erected as an automotive service station in 1927–28 for Arthur Normand at a time when gasoline producers competed, in part, by the shape and style of their service stations. This station is one of two stations known to survive from this period in the state. Its front facade has a dramatic presentation, with square towers topped by pyramidal roofs at the corners, and a projecting round bay in the center topped by a conical roof, with windows arrayed around the bay and on its flanks. The building is currently used as an office for Anchor Financial. Art's Auto was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1978. (Full article...)
Belcourt is a former summer cottage designed by architect Richard Morris Hunt for Oliver Hazard Perry Belmont and located on Bellevue Avenue in Newport, Rhode Island. Construction was begun in 1891 and completed in 1894, and it was intended to be used for only six to eight weeks of the year. Belcourt was designed in a multitude of European styles and periods; it features a heavy emphasis on French Renaissance and Gothic decor, with further borrowings from German, English, and Italian design. In the Gilded Age, the castle was noted for its extensive stables and carriage areas, which were incorporated into the main structure. (Full article...)
One hundred years after the declaration that all men are created equal, there began to gather in Newport a colony of the rich, determined to show that some Americans were conspicuously more equal than others.
The Prudence Island Lighthouse (known locally as the Sandy Point Lighthouse) is located on Sandy Point, Prudence Island, Rhode Island and is the oldest lighthouse tower in the state. Sandy Point is nicknamed Chibacoweda, meaning "little place separated by a passage," because the location is a little more than one mile offshore.
Image 37In 1936, on the 300th anniversary of the settlement of Rhode Island in 1636, the U.S. Post Office issued a commemorative stamp, depicting Roger Williams (from Rhode Island)
Image 58In 1936, on the 300th anniversary of the settlement of Rhode Island in 1636, the U.S. Post Office issued a commemorative stamp, depicting Roger Williams (from Rhode Island)
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