Place

Miantonomi Memorial Park

Quick Facts
Location:
Newport, RI
Significance:
Olmsted Designed Park
MANAGED BY:
The grounds that would become Miantonomi Memorial Park were used as picnic grounds throughout the nineteenth century, until 1881 when Anson Stokes purchased it for farmland. After Stokes’s passing in 1913, his wife Helen inherited the property. Around that time, the Newport Improvement Association commissioned Frederick Law Olmsted Jr. to prepare a plan for overall improvements for the city. Within Olmsted’s Newport Plan, he urged the city to acquire Stokes’s property for a park.

Olmsted submitted his plan to Newark in January of 1921. It included a main gated park entrance and a drive leading from the main entrance to a second, gated entrance. Also included in Olmsted’s plan was parking spaces, playing fields, and a small children’s playground in a regraded lawn area.

Source: "Miantonomi Memorial Park," The Cultural Landscape Foundation

For more information and primary resources, please visit:
Olmsted Research Guide Online 

Frederick Law Olmsted National Historic Site

Last updated: June 7, 2024