Projects
The 1831 Aquidneck Mill Building
In 1996, IYRS completed the rehabilitation of Newport's 1903 electric generating plant that now serves as the school's main teaching facility. Adjacent to the building stands an abandoned mill building, a monument to America's great industrial and maritime past. This site, on the National Register of Historic Places, The Aquidneck Mill building is one of only two remaining structures of its kind on the Newport waterfront. The mill building has a significant degree of historic material still intact, a rarity in the architectural landscape of Newport. The original building was constructed in 1831 with green slate from a quarry in Jamestown, RI.
IYRS has launched a $7.5 million capital campaign to restore its most important unutilized asset: the 30,000 square foot 1831 mill building. The school’s enrollment is at capacity in its current facility. Restoration of the Aquidneck mill will transform 30,000 square feet of unoccupied space into a first-class educational facility: space in the restored mill will create new workshops, classrooms, a library, and an expansive lecture hall.
The mill building’s restoration will also create an integrated campus at the school’s 2.5-acre waterfront site, significantly improving the student experience, enhancing Newport’s streetscape for commerce and tourism, and increasing public access to an education program that functions as a living and working museum. In an interview with IYRS President Terry Nathan, learn more about the restoration of the mill, which will be used to expand programming and house synergistically related tenants.
Read an article on the mill's history by architectural historian Dr. Catherine Zipf and an article on the restoration by John Grosvenor of Newport Collaborative Architects.
The Schooner Yacht Coronet
LOD: 133' Beam: 27' Draft: 12' Sparred Length: 190'
Sail Area: 8300 sq ft
Designers: C. & R. Poillon; William Townsend; Christopher Crosby
Built: 1885 C. & R. Poillon, Brooklyn, New York
Many of Coronet's contemporaries have since vanished. They were sunk, grounded, or simply ruined by the ravages of time. Remnants, models, and photographs of these vessels may still exist, yet Coronet has miraculously stayed afloat. She exists today as a symbol of a gilded age, an exuberant time in American history when a grand yacht was a symbol of great fortune and success that joined its owner's coterie of elegant domains: the townhouse on Fifth Avenue, the summer cottage in Newport. Built in 1885 for American industrialist Rufus T. Bush, Coronet had the luxe of a fine home — but one that was meant to travel to faraway shores. During her first five years, Coronet earned fame as a trans-Atlantic race winner and circumnavigated the globe as one of the first U.S.-registered yachts to round Cape Horn. A series of owners have used Coronet for different ends: for pleasure cruising, racing, scientific exploration, and even as a global voyager for a missionary cause. The storied schooner yacht is now being restored on the IYRS campus with work on the hull and deck scheduled to begin in Fall 2007.
> Read about Coronet's History and Milestones.