View-Master World presents scenes from the View-Master packet Rhode Island (A 740) from the State Tour Series.
Featuring:
- Narragansett
- Saunderstown
- Providence Skyline
- Automated Post Office, Providence
- Brown University
- Pawtucket
- Newport
Packet Cover
Booklet Cover
From the 16-page booklet:
“LITTLE RHODY”
The smallest of the states bears the longest official name: “Rhode Island and Providence Plantations.” The colony was chartered by King Charles II under this title in 1663. Ti was due to the efforts of Roger Williams, founder of the first settlement of Providence in 1636, that the colony was the first in the world to grant “full liberty in religious concernments.”Rhode Island celebrates its Independence Day on May 4th, having declared its freedom from England two months before the other colonies. Wary of losing any of their rights, they were the last to ratify the Constitution (1790).Prior to the Revolution and into the early 1800’s, merchant clippers, slave traders, privateers, and pirates sailed from Rhode Island harbors. An embargo on trade with England in 1807, followed by the War of 1812, ended the flow of wealth into the state from sailing ships. But the building of the first cotton mills in America in the 1790’s made Rhode Island the “Cradle of American Industry and turned her into a manufacturing state.A FEW FACTS AND FIGURES. Although two-thirds covered with forest, Rhode Island is highly industrialized. Textiles, machinery manufacturing, machine tools, metal and rubber products, and jewelry and silverware bring in 97% of an annual income of about $900,000,000. It is 8th nationally in textiles and glass manufacturing, and first in jewelry production. Fishing, especially shellfish, puts Rhode Island third among New England States.GEOGRAPHICALLY SPEAKING. 48 miles long and 37 miles wide, Rhode Island’s total area is 1,214 sq. miles. Bounded on the west by Connecticut, on the north and east by Massachusetts, and to the south by the Atlantic, it is split almost in two by Narragansett Bay which contains several islands, among them Rhode Island (Aquidneck), Conanicut, and Prudence. Block Island lies ten miles off the coast. The mainland drops from an elevation of 812 ft. at Jerimoth Hill in the north to sea level along the coast.THE HUMAN SIDE. The most densely populated state, (869,488 people packed 708 sq. mile), Rhode Island retains an uncrowded look except in the industrial north, where 84% of the people live within 15 miles of Providence. Only 12% of the people live on farms.NARRAGANSETT BAY. Our View-Master Guided Picture Tour of Rhode Island starts at the southwestern end of Narragansett Bay. In 1524 Italian navigator Giovanni da Verrazano recorded the discovery of an island (called Aquidneck by the Narragansett Indians), which he compared to the Island of Rhodes. Another possible name source comes from Adriaen Block, a Dutch explorer (1614) who reported naming an island here “Roodt eylandt” (Red Island) because of the color of its soil.Sandy beaches, sheltered harbors, and a mild climate make Narragansett an area of resort-and-yachting centers.
01 The Towers,
Narragansett
The Towers, Narragansett
From the 16-page booklet:
NARRAGANSETT TOWERS
These towers stretching across the road are all that remain of an old gambling casino that burned. Once an area of huge slave-owning estates like those of the southern aristocracy, today it consists of small farms.
02 Gilbert Stewart Birthplace, Saunderstown
Geo. Washington’s Portrait Painter, Gilbert Stuart Born Here
From the 16-page booklet:
GILBERT STUART HOUSE, SAUNDERSTOWN
One of America’s foremost artists, Gilbert Stuart, was born in 1775 in a second-story bedroom of this building whose first floor houses a colonial snuff mill. After gaining his first fame in England, he returned to America to paint the new country’s leaders. Some of his 124 known portraits of George Washington appear on postage stamps, dollar bills, and $25 U.S. Savings Bonds.
04 Providence
Providence Skyscrapers, Roger Williams Statue (left)
From the 16-page booklet:
PROVIDENCE SKYLINE FROM PROSPECT TERRACE PARK
Roger Williams’ statue looks down on the city which he named in gratitude for God’s providence to him, after his banishment from Massachusetts, for insisting that civil laws should not be used to enforce religious matters.
Providence is a great industrial center, with a population of 207,498 (1960 census), many of Italian descent. Her early history is linked to the sea. Yankee clippers brought great wealth to the city; shipping magnates built fine mansions and other buildings still in use.
06 First Automated Post Office,
Providence
Automated Post Office, Nation’s First, Providence
From the 16-page booklet:
AUTOMATED POST OFFICE
This distinctive, parabolic roof shelters the nation’s first fully-automated post office, in operation since 1959. In a building large enough to contain two football fields (420 ft. long, 300 ft. wide, 55 ft. high), conveyor belts, sorters, and cancelling machines handle a daily load of 1.1 million pieces. The post office was designed to meet an estimated volume of 2 million pieces by 1977.
08 Brown University,
Providence
Brown University, Founded 1674, Providence
From the 16-page booklet:
BROWN UNIVERSITY
Graduates march between these gates and through the streets of Providence in one of the university’s old traditions. Founded in 1674 in Warren, it moved to Providence in 1770. The name was later changed from Rhode Island University to honor the Brown family, who gave much to the college. Three world-famous university collections are the McLellan Lincoln collection, the Annmary Brown Memorial containing books printed from 1450 to 1500, and the John Carter Brown Library of 30,000 volumes dealing with the Western Hemisphere prior to 1800.
10 Old Slater Mill,
Pawtucket
Old Slater Mill Spun Textiles in 1800’s
From the 16-page booklet:
OLD SLATER MILL, PAWTUCKET
The first cotton spinning machines were such a closely guarded secret in England that law prohibited textile workers from leaving the country. In 1789 Samuel Slater memorized the process, and, disguised as a farmer, managed to leave England. He came to Moses Brown’s struggling Pawtucket Mill, and the machines he constructed marked the birth of the Industrial Age in America.
19 The Breakers,
Newport
“The Breakers” Cornelius Vanderbilt Mansion
From the 16-page booklet:
THE BREAKERS
This $3,000,000 mansion, the most magnificent of many along Ten-Mile Drive, was built by Cornelius Vanderbilt in the 1890’s. Although privately owned, it is open to the public and provides a glimpse of luxury almost impossible to duplicate today.
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