Knickerbocker Cafe Westerly

Celebrate Summer in New England

Grand nineteenth- and twentieth-century brick and stone buildings in various states of refurbishment and occupancy sit around the wonderful Wilcox Park. This arboretum-styled landscape was designed by an associate of Frederick Law Olmsted and boasts old-growth trees, a giant cedar grove, and perennial gardens pleasant to walk in. An open meadow also slopes toward a renovated fish pond, offering sunny expanses for reading, napping, and playing on the grass.

The park is owned and operated by the Westerly Public Library, opened as a memorial to Civil War soldiers and sailors in 1894, during the community’s heyday as a primary source of granite for buildings and monuments across the nation. The Babcock-Smith House Museum ( www.babcock-smithhouse.com ), near the spot where granite was discovered in the area in 1845, helps elucidate this industrial history.

The library itself, a private, nonprofit organization, is a town hub. It will soon reopen its Hoxie Gallery, which displays the work of local artists, and hosts many popular gatherings, including art festivals and summer concerts in the park.

There has been an on-again, off-again concerted effort to revitalize Westerly, which sits just across the Connecticut border, during the last two decades. Organizations like the Artists’ Cooperative Gallery ( www.westerlyarts.com )—started in 1992 as a focal point for regional artists, it now offers rotating monthly exhibits and juried shows—and the Westerly Land Trust ( www.westerlylandtrust.org ), active in preserving both rural land and urban properties, have been instrumental in the process, as has the concentrated financing and attention of mutual-fund manager Charles Royce, a longtime summer resident.

In recent years the trust has bought the former United Theater, built in 1928, and the majestic, granite-faced Industrial Trust Bank. Plans are under way to preserve and try to re-adapt those sites. The Colonial Theater ( www.thecolonialtheater.org ) runs an annual Shakespeare festival—in July there are free outdoor performances of The Tempest some to know that this former industrial giant of a city is more than worth spending time in as a tourist. The urban center rivals Providence in size and offers not only a wide range of art, culture, and history but a disproportionate number of great restaurants, parks, a lake—and a string of fun vintage-clothing and home-goods stores.