Easton’s Beach before the 1938 hurricane
A scale model of the Newport Beach Association’s boardwalk, bath houses, Convention Hall, salt-water pool, and roller coaster as they stood in the summers of 1934 to 1938, built from the state’s 1933 road plans, an aerial photograph taken on July 4, 1934, and period postcards. The hurricane of September 21, 1938 demolished the boardwalk and the coaster and left the rest wrecked beyond use.
Liam Blank · October 2026 · Drag to orbit, scroll to zoom, click a label for its history. Ride the roller coaster from the panel.
What stood on the beach
Bath Road ran along the barrier beach between Easton's Pond and the Atlantic. South of it, from the Cliff Walk end to the Middletown line, stood two fields of numbered bathing cabins, the Private Bathing House, the entrance court with its four classical gate towers, the round pavilion that carried the merry-go-round, the salt-water pool with its high-dive tower, the Laundry, a third field of cabins, the Dance Hall, the Convention Hall that the postcards called the Bathing Casino, a parking field, and at the far east end the roller coaster leased in 1930 as "a Roller Coaster of the latest Bobs type." A plank boardwalk on timber piles ran the length of the complex, about 2,300 feet.
The viewpoints along the bottom of the model match the surviving pictures: the 1934 aerial, the postcard of the Casino, the entrance from the road and from the sand, the pool, and the two state photographs taken from the new bridge in 1933 and 1934. The time of day and the model year can be changed in the panel; the summer 1938 setting removes the two road-side gate towers, which the Newport Mercury reported demolished that June.
The record
Bath Road. The Rhode Island State Board of Public Roads’ 1933 plan for rebuilding the road gives its stationing and 42-foot width, the frontages of the Laundry, Bath Houses, Dance Hall, and Convention Hall, the walk to the amusement platform, the Shell station, and the town line at station 31+97. The state’s bridge photographs of 1933 and 1934 look west along the beach from the new bridge.
The 1934 aerial, taken on July 4 from over the water, shows every building in plan: the three fields of bathing cabins, the round pavilion and the pool, the Dance Hall and Convention Hall, the parking field, and the roller coaster’s double oval.
The postcards and photographs give the elevations: the entrance towers from the card "Entrance to Newport Beach" and a Providence Public Library photograph from the sand, the Casino from a linen card of the 1930s, the pool and its diving tower from press photographs of 1932, the shade pavilions from the card "Sun Bathing, Newport Beach," and the coaster’s lift crest and cupolas from the state’s bridge photographs.
Color. No color photograph of the beach is known. The whites, dark roofs, and brick follow black-and-white tone; the buff stucco, red tile, and green roofs follow a hand-tinted postcard.
Evidence grades
- Documented
- Position or form fixed by an engineering plan, a photograph or a newspaper report.
- Reconstructed
- Footprint and massing scaled from the 1934 aerial and matched to pictures.
- Interpretive
- The form is known but the details are inferred: the coaster’s track, the carousel, the stands.
Each label in the model carries its grade and lists the evidence behind it.
Sources
- Rhode Island State Board of Public Roads, Highway Engineering Department, "Newport Bath Road, from Old Beach Road to the Middletown Town Line," Contract 3313, plan and profile, 1933; and Bridge Department photographs, "Easton Beach Bridge," August 1933 to July 1934. Rhode Island Department of Transportation records.
- Oblique aerial photograph of Easton’s Beach, July 4, 1934, attributed to Robert Yarnall Richie.
- Agreement between the Newport Beach Association and John McElwee of Grand Rapids, Michigan, May 14, 1930, for a roller coaster "of the latest Bobs type." Newport land evidence records.
- Sanborn Map Company, Atlas of Newport, 1921, plate 26, inset "Newport Beach Association, Lessees".
- Newport Mercury and Weekly News, March 18, June 17, July 1, July 8, September 23 and September 30, 1938; and 1924 to 1927 issues on the lease, the 1926 fire and the rebuilt Convention Hall, via the Internet Archive.
- Postcards and photographs: Newport Historical Society (linen card no. 127, "Bathing Casino, Newport Beach"); Providence Public Library, Rhode Island Collection; Salve Regina University, Newport postcard collection; Newport Daily News (pool photograph, August 14, 1932).
- The Billboard, 1913 to 1938, on the Newport Beach rides and concessions; Roller Coaster DataBase entry for the Newport Beach coaster.
- RollerCoaster Tycoon reconstruction of the Easton’s Beach coaster, four views (private collection).
- Rhode Island statewide aerial photography, May 1939 (RIGIS).
- Terrain: Mapzen Terrarium elevation tiles (USGS 3DEP); shoreline, pond, and streets: OpenStreetMap contributors.