Fort Adams Preservation Fund

Fort Adams Trust is looking to the future to preserve the past. The nonprofit group established this permanent endowment to help fund ever-increasing operating and maintenance costs at the 185-year-old Fort and surrounding property.

“Fort Adams is one of the most significant historic sites in Rhode Island and is the largest and most complex structure of its type in the country,” explains Eric Hertfelder, executive director of Fort Adams Trust.

Situated at the entrance to Newport harbor, a site considered critical for coastal defense, Fort Adams was built between 1824 and 1857. It housed soldiers and protected Narragansett Bay from 1824 to 1950.

The Fort was acquired by the state in 1965 when it became Fort Adams State Park. “Although the Fort is incredibly well built, it has been a challenge to stabilize or maintain a property of this magnitude with available resources,” states Larry Mouradjian, associate director of Natural Resources Management for the RI Department of Environmental Management (DEM).

The Fort Adams Trust was founded in 1994 to partner with the state to operate the Fort as a public historic site and to seek funding for restoration. Nearly $6 million for restoration has been raised to date from public and private sources. The Trust supports itself through tours and special events such as living history weekends, rentals of the facility, annual appeals, and membership. The Fort hosts the annual Newport Folk and Jazz Festivals produced by George Wein, and it is the proceeds from the festivals that have enabled the Trust to establish this fund.

Significant restoration projects have included the North Casements (with exhibits from the Naval War College Museum), an overnight barracks in the Officers Quarters, and a Redoubt (a small fort outside the main fort), the latter to be completed this year.

Noting the historic, recreational, and tourist/economic significance of the 80-acre site, Hertfelder and Mouradjian agree: “There has been huge progress at the site, and there still are huge opportunities. The future is very promising.”

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