What's new in old Newport

By Richard P. Carpenter, Globe Staff

NEWPORT, R.I. -- Say ''Newport'' and wonderful old things come to mind: Gilded Age mansions, historic and charming inns, colonial sites, and intriguing museums.

But in Newport, the old can be new, thanks to a continuing program of restoration, renovation, and innovation. Add to that the city's more ''current'' attractions -- sailing, shopping, beaches, festivals, modern hotels, and fine restaurants -- and you've got a city that may well offer something new and different every time you return.

The Museum of Newport History is on Thames Street at Washington Square, in the Brick Market. Hours are 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Mondays and Wednesdays through Saturdays, and 1 p.m. to 5 p.m. Sundays. The cost is $5 for adults, $3 for ages 6 through 12, $4 for seniors, and $13 for families. For more information, call 401-846-0813 or 401-841-8770, or fax 401-846-1853.

IF YOU GO . . . Resources

A good place for an overview of the city's rich heritage is at the three-year-old Museum of Newport History, part of the historic Brick Market. All of the people who have contributed to Newport history are represented here -- the ones who have worked and played along the waterfront, Native Americans, English settlers seeking religious tolerance, millionaires, artists, writers, architects, sailors, and people from many nations.

At the museum, you'll find ship models, paintings, colonial silver, an old printing press, and a figurehead from a yacht. But you'll also find more modern artifacts like the glowing neon sign for the Blue Moon Gardens, featuring food, floor shows, dancing, and liquors. And you can hop aboard an 1890s omnibus for a video tour of Bellevue Avenue, home of fabled and familiar mansions like Marble House, the Breakers, and Rosecliff.

Ah, the mansions of the Vanderbilts, Astors, and other tycoons -- those overly opulent symbols of all the wealth the world e'er gave, with their chandeliers and stairways and marble pillars. Nowadays, they are open to us common folk, and many of the buildings are under the auspices of the Preservation Society of Newport County. This summer, two ''new'' historic house museums will be added to the society's list -- houses perhaps not on the scale of the grandest mansions but worthy attractions in their own right. Both will open this summer on a limited basis. And unlike the other mansions' slavish devotion to things European, these two serve up hefty slices of Americana.

Chepstow (and don't you just love that name?) is an Italianate-style villa built in 1860 on Narragansett Avenue. On display will be several significant possessions of Newport's Morris family, including several 19th-century paintings by artists of the Hudson River School.

Meanwhile, on Bellevue Avenue itself, restoration is underway on the Isaac Bell House, called one of the finest examples of shingle-style architecture in America. The home was completed in 1883 for Bell, who had a better-known brother-in-law, James Gordon Bennett Jr., publisher of the New York Herald. The outside blends American colonial style with English Queen Anne, and adds a few Japanese touches, too.

The sea has always been a Newport attraction, and a walk along Thames Street, a ride along 10-mile Ocean Drive, or a hike along the Cliff Walk will show you both its beauty and its bounty of boats. And since one of the city's superlatives is Sailing Capital of the World, it's fitting that the International Yacht Restoration School has come into being.

The museum is on the waterfront on Thames Street. Drop in and you'll see students busily restoring the classic and power yachts of an earlier time. You can tour Coronet, built in 1885 and the oldest American grand yacht in existence. You can take a sailing lesson on the Concordia ketch, Renaissance. Or you can just walk along the oyster-shell pathways, taking in the exhibits and the wide variety of craft. (Newport, of course, also has the well-established Museum of Yachting at Fort Adams State Park on Ocean Drive. The park, incidentally, is host to the world-famous Newport jazz and folk festivals each summer.)

Just as yachting has long been associated with the city, so has tennis. And the International Tennis Hall of Fame and Museum has undergone a five-year, $6 million renovation, making it a lot more fun to visit. Interactive exhibits, video displays -- including one that is the next best thing to watching a real game -- and memorabilia show the past, present, and future of the game. You even learn such things as the impact on the game of one player's lace panties. The Hall of Fame, meanwhile, salutes 168 individuals from 17 countries.

The museum is housed in the 1880 Newport Casino complex, an attraction in itself with its Victorian architecture, lawns, and -- surprise! -- tennis courts. In this case, though, the name ''casino'' doesn't signify gambling. The word is derived from the Italian ''casina,'' meaning ''little house.''

A not-overly-little lodging house is Vanderbilt Hall, opened last year as an answer to the hundreds of requests Newport's tourism people get each year, asking to stay in one of the famous mansions. But they are for touring, not for sleeping. So Vanderbilt Hall, which bills itself as a mansion house hotel, is considered the next best thing. Originally given by Alfred Vanderbilt to Newport in 1909 for a YMCA, the red-brick building now has 50 guest rooms, curving stairways, bright and airy public rooms, an indoor pool, an exercise area, and even a billiards room. The prixe-fixe dining-room menu has won raves from the food critics, with its five courses including entrees such as osso bucco, a veal dish.

New dining opportunities, in fact, seem to be always cropping up in Newport. For instance, drastically different from the Vanderbilt dining room is the just-opened Aidan's Pub, where the atmosphere is Irish, the food is tasty, ample, and reasonably priced, and a pint of Guinness is expertly pulled. And just as there are restaurants to suit all tastes, so are there a variety of lodging places. These include modern luxury hotels like the Doubletree (which this July will open the first hotel spa in Rhode Island) and the Marriott, as well as historic hotels like the Hotel Viking, built in 1926 by Bellevue Avenue's mansion owners to accommodate their guests. But there are also 114 bed-and-breakfast inns, which Newport says is the most of any community in the nation. With names like the Jailhouse Inn, the Francis Malbone House, and the Victorian Ladies Inn, how could these places be anything but interesting.

And how could this city be anything but interesting, especially when they are continually putting the ''new'' in Newport.

Published 05/03/98 in the Boston Suday Globe's Travel Section.