Newporters Say History Is Being Destroyed : Mansions Converted to Condos Spark Ire

The sound of saws slicing mansions into condominiums breaks the golden stillness these days on Bellevue Avenue, the seaside street that the envious call Millionaires’ Row.

The two-mile boulevard of near-castles and other opulent homes is shaded by weeping beech trees, oaks, chestnuts and black walnuts. But developers turning some of these vast homes into subdivisions are casting another kind of shadow over the neighborhood and surrounding community of 35,000 people.

One such conversion that still rankles five years later is a Boston developer’s transformation of Bonniecrest, a Tudor mansion down the road from Millionaires’ Row on Ocean Drive.

Critics decried the renovation as “grotesque” and “tragic.” Venerable trees fell. Bulldozers roared in. Stone ledges were blasted to bits. As a result, the house was removed from the National Register of Historic Places--a designation almost as important in these parts as a listing in the Social Register.

‘Just Disgusting’

“I don’t like new condos. It’s just disgusting. It made Ocean Drive lose some of its historical standing,” said Lisette deRamel, 40, a Bellevue Avenue resident whose forebears were bankers and railroad men who settled in Newport in the 19th Century.

At the turn of the century there were about 400 18th- and 19th-Century mansions. Fire, disrepair and other acts of man and nature have reduced the number to 300. Although 200 remain in private hands, the rest have fallen into the hands of developers, said John Cherol, executive director of the Preservation Society of Newport County.

The rate of condo conversion has eased since federal tax changes reduced investment tax credits on such development, but damage has been done, Cherol said.

The condo dwellers often show up only on weekends and are not active in the community, so “you never get to know them,” he said. They also create more traffic and demand for services.

Longtime Newporters diligent about the upkeep of their family estates harbor some resentment toward the newcomers, he said.

‘Supposed to Be Free’

DeRamel, who said she wants to keep an open mind, voiced the ambivalence of her neighbors. “There’s a question about what we can do (to control development). In America, you’re supposed to be free to do what you want. You can’t stop people from making money.”

However, she said, like many Newporters she is discomforted by speculators with little respect for the city’s history.

“We have a real problem with the people who come here from out of state to make a buck. . . . The ones that everyone wants to beat up on come from God-knows-where. Boston probably,” she said with a smile.

An explosion of high-tech firms in the region also is straining a limited housing stock, said Joanne Merchant, a real estate agent and office manager at Private Properties, a Bellevue Avenue brokerage specializing in estates.

The haughty industrialists who flocked to Newport in 19th-Century summers are being replaced by a new breed. Companies like Raytheon and IBM “have brought in yuppies by the hundreds,” Merchant said.

Costly Condos

Some moved into the condos fashioned from the mansions, sometimes paying more than $500,000 for something on the waterfront.

Older professionals and well-to-do retirees buy condos too. They come from places as near as Providence, just 40 minutes away, and as far as Florida and Texas, Merchant said.

In downtown Newport, they are not bashful about playing to the curiosity of ordinary folks. Signs direct the annual procession of nearly 1 million tourists to the “mansions.” In midweek, even in the off-season, buses of gawking schoolchildren roll down the avenue.

Tourists come to see remnants of an America run by men who thought big and built bigger. But what many Newporters fear is that what they see is a shrinking heritage.