Queer Places:
4 Training Station Rd, Newport, RI 02840
2nd St & Walnut St, Newport, RI 02840
Island Cemetery
Newport, Newport County, Rhode Island, USA
Arthur Leslie Green (1864 - December 6, 1949) is virtually unknown today to students of the Colonial Revival movement or to inhabitants of his adopted home, Newport, Rhode Island. However, at the peak of his career, between 1910 and 1930, he enjoyed a degree of national prominence as a leading collector of Windsor chairs and as a purveyor of colonial woodwork and furniture. Likewise, the Newport house that Green moved to Training Station Road in 1903 and embellished with architectural fragments from recently demolished and altered local houses drew immediate attention. Admittedly a colonial pastiche, it attracted many visitors who sought a glimpse of America's "quaint and genteel past."
Arthur Leslie Green was born in Davenport, IA, the son of John W. Green and Ellen Denman. He graduated from Trinity College, Harford, CT, and moved to Newport with his mother in 1896 to teach at Cloyne School, which Dr Oliver W. Huntington had founded that year. The Weaver-Franklin House, as he called it, which he moved from Walnut Street, still stands on Training Station Road, as does Cranford Cottage, the adjacent house Green constructed in 1921 for year-round use. He furnished this house, and the house at the southwest corner of Walnut and Second streets, Easton Proprietors' House, with antiques. At one time he opened his collection to the public at stated intervals. The purchased part of his property added it to the Naval Hospital ground's. The Cloyne School school, which was located at the northerly side of 'Training Station road, was the site of St. Michael's School when it was founded by Chauncey B. Beasley and before it was moved to its present location on Rhode Island avenue. He also taught at Holderness, NH, before moving to Newport. At one time he refused an offer of $125.000 from Henry Ford for his colonial cottage and antique contents. Instead he sold it to Henry A. Hoffman of Litchfield, CT, for $25.000, subject to life tenancy. He accepted the lower offer, it was understood, because he did not want the building and contents to be moved to Dearborn, MI, as desired by Ford.
He never married. Funeral services were in the Naval Hospital chapel and he is buried at Island Cemetery with his mother. His estate was value at $15,000 and provided for the Easton Proprietors' House, one of the oldest houses on the Point, to be opened as a a museum and the establishment of a fund to assist worthy young men in college. Lawrence W. Champlin was named executor and trustee, without bond, with power to appoint other executors, in which case he should be chairman of the board of trustees. Furnishings in his home, Cranford Cottage, were inventoried in detail, specifying which articles had a life interest and to whom they reverted. He provided for the care of the grave in the Island cemetery, where his mother was buried, specifying that the superintendent was only to cut the grass, and that some other person was to take care of the grave. He suggested George Pinheiro, his gardener, and alloted $100 to him for this purpose. He left certain magazines, postal cards, matches, razor blades and pencils in one room, together with stationery and ship pictures, to the Seamen's Church Institute. Other books were to go to the Naval Hospital, to be given to the patients and not given to the Ships Storts there. He left Dr. Raymond E. Meek, formerly at the Naval Hospital, all "eye glasses and magnifying-glasses and vitamin pills" crediting Dr. Sleek as having "restored my eyesight."
The Easton Proprietors' House was to be continued as a museum, setting 50 cents as a fee "to keen too many from applying" and suggesting that "Mrs. Booth of 50 Second street show the will to visitors and receive, one-half of the fee. He suggested that her son, then attending Trinity College in Hartford, be named a trustee if an additional, one is named." If sufficient funds were not received to continue it as a museum, he specified that it be sold. First, however, he suggested that Mrs. George Cerio and J. H. Kelso Davis, of Hartford and Dr. Ethan Allan Brown, of Boston, might assist in continuing the museum. After all-efforts were exhausted to keep the museum open, then the residence was to be used to assist a worthy-young man or men in furthering their education.
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