Washington Square is the geographical and historical heart of Newport, Rhode Island. More trapezoid than square, it sits at the intersection of several major streets and what was the colonial long wharf, projecting into the harbor off Aquidneck Island and into Narragansett Bay. Although its civic origins are colonial, dating back to the first settlement of 1639, much of the square’s present shape, form, and even its name dates from the 19th century, while a number of its most prominent buildings are of early 20th century design.
Like many civic spaces here, it developed over time rather than being imposed by design. Imagine the first Anglo settlers — William Coddington, John Clarke, Henry Bull, and the Easton family — clustering house lots of about ten acres near a fresh water spring a short distance uphill from the shoreline. The spring still flows, now subterranean; the original houses are gone, the last, Henry Bull’s, destroyed by fire in 1912.
What remains are the street layout and the adjacent names you see — Coddington, Bull, Clarke, Dyer — small, steady anchors to that long history. Notice those streets and the early-20th-century buildings that frame this square for you.