The Newport Tower is a round stone tower located in Touro Park in Newport, Rhode Island.
The tower is located on Mill Street, surrounded by a historical residential neighborhood on the hill above the waterfront tourist district. The hill itself once furnished a view of the harbor and would have been visible to passing mariners in Narragansett Bay, but recent tree growth now obscures the view of the harbor from the top of the tower.
The Newport Tower was not built around a perfectly circular plan. It has a height of 28 feet and an exterior width of 24 feet. It is supported by eight cylindrical columns that form stone arches, two of which are slightly broader than the other six. Above the arches and inside the tower is evidence of a floor that once supported an interior chamber. The walls are approximately 3 feet thick, and the diameter of the inner chamber is approximately 18 feet. At one time the sides were coated with a smooth coating of white plaster, the remains of which can still be seen clinging to the outer walls. The chamber is penetrated by a window and almost opposite to it is a fireplace backed with grey stone and flanked by nooks.
The prevailing explanation among historians for the origin of the structure is the "Arnoldist" explanation, namely that the tower was a mill constructed in the middle or late 17th century by or for wealthy Rhode Island colonial governor Benedict Arnold, great-grandfather of the patriot-traitor. It is known that Arnold, who moved into the area in 1661, once owned the land on which the tower stands.
The city of Newport finally gave permission for a scientific investigation of the site by the Society for American Archaeology in 1948. The result, concluded that all the artifacts discovered below the tower were from the 17th century, thus supporting the Arnoldist camp. In 2006 the Chronognostic Foundation, an Arizona based research firm, provided the funds necessary to conduct an archaeological investigation of the anomalies discovered in Touro Park. Press reports following the dig clearly show that nothing earlier than the 1600s was found.
Supporters of alternative theories have devoted a great deal of energy to dismissing the evidence for a seventeenth century date of construction. Part of the mystery of the Newport Tower though, is that there is some room for doubt on all claims. The most popular alternative explanation for the existence of the tower, and the only one that has been seriously entertained by a handful of professional archaeologists, is that it was built by Viking explorers in the 10th or 11th centuries.
Other theories argue that the tower was built by the Chinese navigator Zheng He in 1421, by Portuguese navigator Miguel Corte-Real, who supposedly shipwrecked in 1501 or 1502 while searching for his lost brother in Narragansett Bay or by the Scottish earl Henry Sinclair who is claimed by some to have visited Nova Scotia and New England in the year 1398.
