Belmont Chapel | 18th Doris Duke Preservation Awards

The Belmont Chapel Foundation was awarded a Doris Duke Historic Preservation Award for the detailed restoration of Belmont Chapel, a ca.1887 George Champlin Mason-designed funeral chapel in Island Cemetery. The project not only saved the building from possible demolition, but also reactivated the surrounding cemetery by providing a space to host burial services, lectures, and events.

The 2024 Doris Duke Historic Preservation Awards highlight innovative approaches to preservation, including new technologies, materials/products, creative adaptive reuse, and excellence in practice, climate change adaptations, and similarly progressive concepts.

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About NRF

The Newport Restoration Foundation is a non-profit organization established by philanthropist Doris Duke in 1968 to preserve the architectural and cultural heritage of 18th and 19th century Newport. NRF promotes economic and community restoration through historic preservation initiatives like Keeping History Above Water, which addresses the impact of sea-level rise on the built environment in the wake of climate change, and the Historic Trades Initiative, which harnesses the knowledge of local specialists to train the next generation of preservation craftspeople. In addition to a collection of more than 70 colonial houses, now rented to tenant stewards, NRF operates properties that are open to the public —including Rough Point, the Newport home of Doris Duke, and The Vernon House, a site of expansive storytelling, contemporary dialogue, and preservation trades skill-building.

For more information, visit https://www.newportrestoration.org