“We bought the property in 2006 and things were OK then,’’ Moore said. “Then things turned but we were dedicated to doing it. We provided 100 construction jobs and since we opened, more than 100 hotel jobs. Things have gone well in the first year of operation.’’
With Moore, a Philadelphia lawyer, the partners are Dorrance H. “Dodo’’ Hamilton, the billionaire philanthropist and Campbell Soup heiress who has summered in Newport most of her life, and Peter Borden, a Pennsylvania native and now Newport contractor.
The hotel’s location seems ideal, just off lower Thames Street where Memorial Drive bends up toward Bellevue Avenue. It’s a two-minute walk to the left to the high-end stores and restaurants on upper Thames. To the right is the older district that is home to many small, locally owned boutiques and restaurants, an area that’s more of a working waterfront of blue-collar fishing boats and not the multimillion-dollar yachts moored off America’s Cup Avenue.
Forty 1° North had been a members-only hotel and restaurant before it was bought, razed, and replaced with this new property. Since it sits right on the harbor, deck dining and imbibing on the wharf is superb, in cushioned rattan furniture with the twinkling lights of Newport Bridge to the right. The place was quiet on the late-spring Tuesday night when we visited, but on weekends, bar manager Dan Reagan said, it’s jammed with people having drinks and watching the sun set.
The hotel’s “campus,’’ as it’s called, consists of 24 guest rooms and suites in the main building, and four cottages and lofts in stand-alone structures. The guest rooms in the main building are bright and airy with muted gray design and windows that open to allow in sea breezes. Our room was on the third floor with a slider that opened to a railing (no balcony but the much larger suites have them) affording a smashing harbor view.
