NEWPORT

A short history of Newport

Newport was settled c. 1791 by James Taylor Jr. on land purchased by his father James Sr. from George Muse, who received it as a grant. Taylor's brother, Hubbard Taylor, had been mapping the land twenty years prior. It was not named for its position on the river but for Christopher Newport, the commander of the first ship to reach Jamestown, Virginia, in 1607. Newport was established as a town on December 14, 1795, and incorporated as a city on February 24, 1834. In 1803, the Ft. Washington military post was moved from Cincinnati to become the Newport Barracks. A bridge first connected Newport to Covington in 1853, and the first bridge spanning the Ohio River to Cincinnati, the John A. Roebling Suspension Bridge, opened in 1866. Newport experienced large German immigration in the 1880-90s.

By 1900, Newport was the third largest city in Kentucky, after Covington and Louisville, although Newport and Covington were rightly considered satellites of Cincinnati.

Prohibition under the Volstead Act of 1919 resulted in a widespread illegal sale of alcohol. Many gangsters began to smuggle alcohol into the city to supply citizens and businesses. Speakeasies, bribery, and corruption became a norm in Newport. A well known Newport crime boss was gambler and National Crime Syndicate member Ed Levinson.

In 1921, Newport was rocked by a steel mill strike of +2,000 workers, following the end of WW1 and steel industry downturn. The strike involved one in five of the town's workers and was over recognition for the three unskilled union locals that made up the four locals within the union. During it, following unrest and the company arming the mill with machine guns, state militia companies and later tanks were stationed in the town, withdrawn in late 1922. The strike was partially broken by the end of 1922 with some steelworkers leaving the town and others finding separate jobs in Newport. However, the strike did not formally end until seven years later in 1928, without union recognition for the three locals.

Newport's worst natural disaster occurred in 1937, when a flood covered a great part of the city. A flood wall was completed in 1948, and remains a significant part of Newport's landscape.

Newport once had the reputation of "Sin City" due to its upscale gambling casinos on Monmouth street. Monmouth also had many men's stores, restaurants, and ice cream parlors. Investigations for racketeering pushed out the casinos, which were replaced by peep shows and adult strip clubs. Many of the old businesses disappeared when parking became difficult on Monmouth Street and the commercial district opened on the hill of south Newport.

A garage at 938 John Street manufacturing illegal fireworks exploded without warning in 1981, leaving severe damage up to a six-block radius.

In the 1980s and 1990s, Newport made plans to develop its riverfront and core to focus primarily on "family friendly" tourism, instead of the "Sin City" tourism of the past. In May 1999 the $40-million Newport Aquarium opened, and the historic Posey Flats apartments were leveled in favor of the Newport on the Levee entertainment complex, which opened the following year.

In 1997 plans for a 1,015-foot (309 m) structure called the "Millennium Tower" were revealed. The tower's main selling point was that building it would be financed by private money, as opposed to taxpayer money. The tower was expected to be completed by 2003, but investors later pulled out and no construction was done. Today the site for the tower is a parking lot next to the World Peace Bell.

Adapted (trimmed) from the Wikipedia article Newport, Kentucky, revision 1374772837 by its contributors, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0.