A loving restoration brings Belmont Chapel back to life

From Ruins to Reverence in the Heart of Island Cemetery

Photos by Dave Hansen

The sudden death of 19-year-old Jane Pauline Belmont left a void in the lives of August Belmont and his wife, Caroline Slidell Perry Belmont, that no amount of wealth could fill. “Miss Belmont was a remarkably amiable girl and was endeared to a host of friends who keenly regret her loss,” The Newport Daily News reported in October 1875, upon the arrival of the boat carrying her remains from New York for interment in the family vault in Island Cemetery.

Her grave was marked by an ornately carved cross, and her memory is preserved in what is now known as the Belmont Memorial Chapel, a Richardsonian-Romanesque shrine built in 1886 by George Chaplin Mason & Son for the Belmont family.

Boarded up and neglected for more than four decades, the chapel reemerged last October from a shroud of wisteria and ivy after a $2.5 million restoration returned it to its Victorian-era glory— seemingly a fulfillment of an inscription marking Jane Belmont’s headstone and several locations inside the chapel: “Patience.”

Newporter Harry Eudenbach, an estate gardener by trade, remembers first noticing the overgrown chapel while walking his dog in the cemetery. The late Francis Girr, a local historian, filled him in on the chapel’s backstory, including August Belmont’s failure to provide funds for its upkeep after his death. It spurred Eudenbach to volunteer to help restore it.

“At first, I just wanted to take the vines off,” here calls, but the damage to the chapel was more than horticultural. Holes in the slate roof had allowed water to leak and leaves to fall inside, raccoons had taken up residence under the eaves, and vandals had damaged the chapel’s precious stained-glass windows, including an irreplaceable Tiffany panel. That neither partying trespassers nor years of harsh New England winters had damaged the chapel’s altar was considered something of a miracle, Eudenbach says.

He established the Belmont Chapel Foundation in 2014, after learning how extensive and expensive the repairs would be. Over the next decade, $2.5 million in capital campaign donations was raised to restore the interior and exterior of the historic chapel. Through the foundation, Sharon Hussey and Pamela Kelley, the cemetery’s new caretakers, managed funding from the Alletta Morris McBean Charitable Trust, the van Beuren Charitable Foundation, Preserve RI/1772 Foundation, and the Champlin Foundation, as well as private dovations.

Constructed from rare, rock-faced brownstone, the chapel is a focal point of Island Cemetery. With its entrance portico, tall dormers and belfry, the one-and-a-half story structure is unique in the compact neighborhood of older, single-family homes. A circular burial plot outside the front entrance is the final resting place of both August and Caroline Belmont, as well as their son, August II. Caroline Belmont’s father, Commodore Matthew G. Perry, the Newporter credited with opening Japanese ports to American traders in1884, also is buried there.

“The Belmonts were a wealthy family, so they didn’t skimp, but nor is the chapel ornate or showy,” says Eudenbach. The true beauty lies mostly within, where decorative paint and plaster, wall adornments, and stained-glass windows have been meticulously restored or recreated by a team that included the historic artisans of John Canning & Co. and Serpentino Stained & Leaded Glass. Eudenbach recalls Serpentino President Roberto Rosa “being very upset that the windows were damaged.” Determined to restore them to their original beauty, Rosa tracked down the original plans in Paris and used them to guide the artists restoring the windows. “You can’t even tell they were damaged,” says Eudenbach.

Six of the chapel’s 10 hand-carved, individually decorated oak pews were also salvaged. “Each of them is a work of art in and of themselves,”Eudenbach says.

Originally intended as a site to hold committal services for those buried in the cemetery, the chapel is being repurposed as an event venue. Even before the restoration was complete, the building played host to art exhibitions by Art&Newport and inscription artist Nick Benson.

“My grandfather, father, and I have carved monuments on the cemetery grounds, including some right outside the chapel,” says Benson, a prized stonecutter and owner of the John Stevens Shop, the centuries-old monument company whose headstones fill Island Cemetery and other Newport graveyards. “The chapel is so beautifully created by hand; it’s made of brownstone that doesn’t even exist anymore and is of incredibly high quality. It was very upsetting to see it in such a state of disrepair, but it’s an absolutely stunning restoration that spared no expense.”

The events attracted appreciative audiences to the chapel, says Eudenbach, “including many people of means who had been unaware of it.” And that resulted in a boost in funds for the restoration project, he says.

A Victorian Christmas carol concert held in December was the most recent public event at the chapel. The first was the grand opening in October when residents and visitors were invited to view the fully restored building.

In addition to exhibitions and performances, the chapel is available for small weddings and memorial services, for which it originally was designed. Eudenbach says there’s no desire for the chapel to become a tourist attraction like the Newport mansions; the plan is to open the building once a month to visitors. They will be able to visit the chapel, view exterior details of the building during daylight hours, and stroll through the surrounding cemetery’s arboretum-likegrounds.

Island Cemetery was established in 1848, and developed as a ‘garden cemetery,’ according to its website.

“Victorian cemeteries were designed as places to sit and contemplate and enjoy,” says Benson. “It was a time where most things were still made by hand, so people understood the craftsmanship that went into a building like this. The chapel, in its restored form, is a testament to that world.”

For more information about Island Cemetery, visit www.islandcemeterynewport.com, and to learn more about any upcoming events at the chapel, click here.