(bright music) - [Narrator] There's an old uniform in the collection that was worn by one of the soldiers stationed here.

We'll examine some of the tools used to build this massive structure and see what's being done today to save the old fort.

And no trip to an installation like this would be complete without a cannon firing.

This is "Treasures Inside the Museum."

(bright music) (bright music) (gentle music) On October 28th, 2001, a flag was flown over Fort Adams for the first time in 50 years.

The small ceremony marked the beginning of a decades-long commitment to restoring the structure and preserving artifacts that would be placed on exhibit.

Located at the entrance to Newport Harbor, Fort Adams has seen countless different uses.

It has been an overnight campground for Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts.

Archeologists have sifted through the grounds looking for pieces of our past.

It was made into a state park, used as a wedding venue, and has become a stage for major music festivals.

But more than anything, Fort Adams has been a strategically placed military installation.

- Newport Harbor was one of the deepest natural harbors, one of the easiest to access, especially during winter storms with the southern opening onto the Atlantic Ocean.

So, it was really also strategically placed between Boston and New York.

And so the main fear was the enemy could come in and house a large fleet within Newport Harbor.

From here, attack up and down the New England coast, and as far south as New York.

(gentle music) - [Narrator] Construction of this imposing structure was overseen by one of the military's brightest minds, Joseph Totten.

- Colonel Totten was the superintendent of construction.

He arrived in 1825 and oversaw the majority of the work through the 1830s.

While he was here, he used it as a school to teach young engineers how to build these forts.

- And it was his job to marshal the forces, all manual laboring forces, and the materials and build something that had never been built before in the United States.

- During that time, they did have dignitaries that would come out, see some of the works in progress.

I like to think he probably didn't show them everything, but showed them enough so that they would know that this was not a fort worth fighting against.

(gentle music) - Everybody was learning something at Fort Adams.

If you came here and you worked, you left an improved person.

So, the graduates from West Point who were good engineering students, they became operating military architects and engineers.

They became great civil engineers.

Some of them became railroad builders.

Some of them became military officers who served in the Mexican War and the Civil War, and others became stonemasons and bricklayers in Newport, some of the laborers.

- The fort was built to house 2,400 soldiers.

On the rare occasion where they had more than that, they'd set up tents and have a whole encampment here in the center.

And then later on in its life, kind of between World War I and World War II, there was actually a baseball diamond right here on the parade field.

Fort Adams is managed by the Fort Adams Trust.

We're a non-profit that partners with the State of Rhode Island to restore and maintain the fort.

So, we have daily guided tours as well as self-guided tours.

We have overnights for Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts.

We have reenactments.

We used to do a haunted house out here.

We have clam bakes, lobster boils.

We do weddings.

Of course, the Jazz and Folk Festival are housed here.

So, a lot of different events out here to raise funds and raise awareness of the fort and of our mission.

- [Narrator] Tours of the fort are offered regularly and begin with a visit to a small museum.

- Much of the collection that we have at Fort Adams has been donated by folks whose fathers or grandfathers have been stationed here.

So, most of it is the turn of the 20th century through till the fort's decommissioning in the 1950s.

- [Narrator] Exhibits here include pieces that reflect the building of the fort as well as its military history.

- This is actually a uniform of a soldier that was stationed here.

Sergeant Thomas Foshey was stationed here in 1902, enlisted here and was active, eventually rising to the rank of sergeant by 1905 when he left the Force.

After that, regretfully, he did fall ill. Actually passed when he was 35 years old.

And so upon his passing, they essentially took everything he had from his time here, put it in a chest, and there it stayed for, you know, the better part of 80 years till I think one of his grandkids opened it up and saw what it was and contacted us.

This is, in fact, the chest that all of his items were stored in.

Much of it we still have in our storage, but there is one little treasure I wanted to point out, which is actually the coat for the mascot of the 79th Artillery.

So, this would've, of course, gone on the back of a dog for when they do company photos and that sort of stuff, I'm sure it would've been on at that time.

It's one of the most unique.

You know, there's a lot of, you know, books and other things that were included.

We've been able to digitize all the photos that were in the chest and, but this is one that always kind of gets a little smile or a chuckle from the visitors.

(gentle music) Really, it's just truly the most in-depth collection that we have of someone that was actually stationed here.

Not just photos, but physical items that, really, we would not have otherwise.

Certainly he was stationed here at a very good time.

This would've been between the Spanish-American War and prior to the, you know, start of World War I.

And so it was, you know, by that time, they were starting to refer to Fort Adams as the country club of the army.

So, really would've been a very nice spot to be stationed at that time.

(upbeat music) - [Narrator] Other treasures include some of the tools of war that would've been kept here through the years.

- This is a model of 1863 Springfield.

.58 caliber, a cap-lock.

This is what the soldiers had to use years ago and this is the technology of the day.

Feel it, touch it, hold it.

You feel the connection.

These were soldiers served here.

Families lived here at Fort Adams.

Soldiers needed their shirts repaired.

Families had their own sewing machines.

They took pictures.

The smallest items are sometimes, they're touchstones.

This is the soul of America.

(gentle music) - [Narrator] Some items in the collection come to the museum having not been preserved so well.

- Certainly, the oldest artifacts in our collection are items that have been found onsite, you know, through various restoration efforts and the efforts of our volunteers clearing out different parts of our fort.

- This is a place where our treasures are something that's very, are very accessible and they tell a story about real human beings.

- A lot of what we're finding is, you know, tools that would've been used, you know, either during the construction or while the fort was actively garrison.

(gentle music) - Some of the treasures we have at Fort Adams are the actual tools and the actual building materials that were used by the laborers and the skilled masons and the carpenters and the blacksmiths who were here working on the fort during that construction phase.

(gentle music) (gentle music) This is a block and tackle and it was used to lift heavy objects before the use of steam engines and other devices.

This is what the laborers would use to move the cannons.

This is what the laborers would use to move the multi-ton pieces of granite.

This is the way everything was lifted and moved during the construction phase of the fort, which was between the 1820s and the 1840s.

This required hundreds of laborers.

Everything in the fort was done by hand.

And I think it's important to remember that Fort Adams was one of the largest construction projects in the entire United States prior to the Civil War.

It was a huge undertaking.

And so some of our treasures are things like this block and tackle.

Visitors always ask me, "How did they lift these cannons up here?

How did they do that back in the 1820s and 1830s?"

And you probably learned about these, even in elementary school, they teach you about these simple machines.

These tools are a testament to the folks who used them.

I never knew treasures had to be shiny.

I never knew treasures had to be roped off.

This is history you can touch, as we say at Fort Adams.

(bright music) - [Narrator] Uncovering the history of Fort Adams is an ongoing process, often aided by an extensive collection of plans, maps, and documents.

Even a piece of music was discovered, the "Fort Adams March."

(bright music) Some of the most valuable information has come from photographs, sometimes taken by soldiers who were stationed there.

(bright music) - These photos came from John and Margaret Dugan.

John Dugan was stationed here in the 1930s.

So, following his passing, his son had actually digitized all of the photos that they took during that time.

And again, each one of them shows a different part of the fort that we had not otherwise seen.

You know, visitors today would not see, you know, in particular on this photo here, it actually shows kind of a mudroom that was built outside of the granite walls, and all of the entrances in and out of the East Wall, the officer's quarters, would've had one of those 'cause had they not, it would get very drafty in the winter.

So, as we look to restore the East Wall, we may look to replicate one of those and we'd certainly use that as a reference for it.

John was stationed here primarily the mid '30s through till the early '40s before he left for World War II.

So, primarily 1930s when they were really using Fort Adams as a training facility before soldiers left for war.

This is a photo of one of the mortar batteries out here at Fort Adams.

And so these soldiers are training on how to load and fire that.

From there, they would've elevated up and essentially the mortar was designed so that it would fire up into the air and then descend down onto the deck of the enemy ship where it would hopefully penetrate the deck and possibly all the way through to the hull.

One of the interesting things about this particular photo, as you can see on this photo, all of this is blacked out and this is what is actually there.

So, they had actually doctored that when they originally made that photo.

In case it got out to the enemy, they wouldn't actually know where those gunning placements were.

So, again, you can kind of see the before and after on where those placements had been.

So, that was a really unique photo once we actually looked at it a second or third time.

Both of these photos would've been taken from on top of the southern redoubt, which lies about a half mile to the south of the fort.

They had a tower on top, and so that's where most of the large-scale photos like this were taken.

(dramatic music) - [Narrator] That southern redoubt was only recently rescued from the ravages of time.

- The redoubt is the southernmost structure in the direction that the enemy was expected to attack, and it would serve as a tripwire to prevent the enemy from surprising the fort.

They would actually have to lay siege to this little mini fort before they could attack the main fort itself.

There's a classical definition of a redoubt that this fits.

There's no bastions here.

There's only demi-bastions, and only defensive weapons that can't be used against the main fort.

The reason it's here is to serve as sort of a tripwire, an advanced warning post for the fort, but the fort itself was never attacked.

But this particular structure, because of its nature, it's sunken into the ground.

It was reused through the entire life of the fort.

So, there were functions here that were active, you know, related to more modern gun batteries that were installed here.

So, this was active through the entire life of the fort.

It is unusual, the redoubts, typically for the American First System forts, they did not build extensive land defenses.

The theory was that the militia would come up and back up the fort.

So, this is one of the few places where they actually built extensive land defenses to protect the fort from a land defense.

The primary purpose of the forts was typically to defend against ship attack.

So, this one sort of serves both purposes.

It's protected from ships and also from land attack as well.

(gentle music) - [Narrator] It's taken volunteers hundreds of hours to remove all of the trees and brush that had taken over this structure.

The building was then secured and cleaned out, revealing one of Fort Adam's unique architectural elements.

- We're standing here today in the center of the Fort Adams redoubt, and this is the unique double spiral staircase to the roof of the redoubt.

You have two spiral staircases free standing that spiral around each other.

And you can see one staircase here that I'm standing on.

The other staircase is here next to me and unfortunately has been partially damaged.

So, we have a number of steps that are missing here.

At one point, there was a wooden watch tower built on top of this tower, and it caught fire a couple times.

And from the remnants we see, it looks like perhaps fire damage damaged the staircase.

Folks think that, hey, it's a stone fort, fire can't hurt it.

But actually, fire and heat is extremely bad for the masonry.

So, unfortunately, part of the staircase was damaged as well as another section, you can see here with the rebar standing out, that was repaired by concrete.

Back in 2010, I started an effort to stabilize this staircase and keep it from further decay and you can see some of the wooden bracing that was installed to try and preserve it so that we can then hopefully someday restore it to its full glory.

(gentle music) - [Narrator] Between the southern redoubt and the main fort is another unusual feature waiting to be explored.

- When you pay a visit to our museum, one of the places we'll take you is into this listening tunnel.

Now, we call it a listening tunnel because soldiers were sent here under the crownworks that's built on top of this and they were sent down here during a battle to listen.

And if you could look at this, all of the walls are brick and mortar, but there are some places where you can dig through the wall and these were listening posts.

And this is where where the soldiers would sit and listen for the enemy trying to dig tunnels underneath the fort.

This was a very common practice in Europe for centuries when they were attacking a castle or a fortified city.

The opposing army, the invading army, would always try to dig tunnels under their outerworks, their defensive works.

And to prevent that at Fort Adams, the engineers here decided that they would build a system of tunnels.

(gentle music) (gentle music) This is unique in the United States.

Other fortifications that were built were built on islands, so they didn't need land defenses, like Fort Sumter in Charleston, South Carolina.

There are other fortresses that, like, castles, they had boats built around them and drawbridges over the moats.

But the engineers here at Fort Adams wanted to build something a little different and something that wasn't as common.

They would be sitting and they'd be listening.

They would have a pick.

They wouldn't have guns down here.

They would have a pick and a shovel.

And if they heard anything, especially the sound of digging in that direction or in this direction, they would remove this material and they would dig.

There is a powder magazine in the crownworks close by.

So, as one soldier would run to get powder, the other soldier would start digging towards the sound, hopefully intercept the enemy tunnel, put a keg of gunpowder with a long fuse on it, and destroy the enemy tunnel before it could get to your outerworks and defensive works.

And you'll never see anything like this in the United States.

(gentle music) - The whole reason you make a fort this big and this complex is really to act as a deterrent so the enemy never even considers attacking.

- [Narrator] A big part of that deterrent at Fort Adams was the number and placement of cannons.

Almost all of the original cannons were removed and many ended up in Newport Harbor.

Today, one of the original cannons has been recovered and restored.

- This cannon is a 24-pound cannon, and that refers to the weight of the cannonball that it would fire, and it is original to our fort.

As far as what's original, it is just the barrel itself.

All this woodwork and ironwork was done about 20 years ago, but made to replicate what a casemate cannon and carriage would've looked like.

So, the fort was originally intended to mount 468 cannons.

Today we have seven of them.

All of them were actually found in Newport Harbor being used as, you know, mooring and anchoring points.

So, they pulled them up about 40 years ago, brought them back as an example of what would've been mounted in these rooms.

It's important to give folks context as to what these rooms would've been used for.

Otherwise it would, you know, look like a large open space.

And this kind of brings home the defensive capabilities of this fort and its original intent.

- The weaponry here was state of the art for the time the fort was designed for.

We were set up to defend Newport Harbor against an enemy force and our guns were equal to or much bigger than what they could mount on a ship.

And also, ships guns are moving.

Ours were dialed in.

We knew where every cannonball was going to land.

- Today it looks like just granite and a bunch of bricks, but it was really cutting-edge technology at that time.

The creation of casemates allowed the soldiers to actually have cannons on top of cannons so that you could concentrate your firepower on a small area.

And so the casemate was created strong enough to withstand the bombardment from any cannon, but also they created vents that allowed the cannons, when cannons like this are fired, obviously there's a lot of smoke that comes with that.

So, above each of the openings in front of embrasures where the cannons were fired, they actually had vents that would essentially pull the smoke out of these rooms so the soldiers can continue to return fire and be able to do so while they can still see what they're doing.

(gentle music) - [Narrator] History tells us that Fort Adams was never attacked and never fired a shot in hostility.

There are, however, special occasions when one of the smaller guns is rolled out, either for ceremonial purposes or to mark a special event.

(gentle music) - It's ready.

Aim fire.

(cannon booming) (machine whirring) - [Narrator] Today, it takes a different kind of firepower to protect the old fort.

The years have taken their toll, and replacing an old roof is one of the first steps.

Keeping water out will prevent additional damage and allow restoration efforts to continue.

- In the years that the fort was decommissioned, this really had fallen into massive disrepair.

So, it's really just recently we've been able to open any of it at all.

This is actually the original kitchen for the fort and we're actually looking upon one of the original ovens.

Essentially think of like a big pizza oven, brick-fired, you know, wood-fired pizza, rather.

Every soldier, at least one or more times a day, came here.

(gentle music) (gentle music) (gentle music) - The building itself is an architectural artifact, and within it are, you know, little pieces that people from the past have had their hands on.

(gentle music) Once these buildings get to a point where the deterioration is so bad, things are just gonna fall to the ground and, you know, once these buildings are gone, that's it.

There's no replacing them.

(gentle music) (gentle music) We started here with some rebuilding of the embrasure openings over on the north front, but that sort of segued into repointing, which you can see finished behind me versus an untreated wall here, which has yet to still have some work done to it.

We have rebuilt all these structural arches through the openings between the casemates.

- This is an example of, really, the kind of work that can be done to restore these areas.

You know, over the years the fort was abandoned, so much of it had fallen into disrepair that these arches pretty much entirely collapsed.

So, they came back and redid this and have done fantastic work on all of the arches inside this area to show what they originally would have been.

(gentle music) First they had to remove all of the original brick and then shore up everything on top.

And as much as possible, they tried to reuse any of the bricks that they'd found so that, you know, about 80 to 90% of the bricks used were all found here onsite would've been original to what would've been here.

(gentle music) - [Narrator] The Fort Adams Trust hopes that future restoration projects will continue to open up new areas for the public to explore.

There are objects inside the museum and all around the fort that now have a life beyond their original use.

They are a pathway for future generations to better understand our past.

(gentle music) (bright music) (bright music) (bright music) (bright music) - [Announcer] This program and other episodes of "Treasures Inside The Museum," as well as digital extras, are now available to watch anytime by visiting rhodeislandpbs.org or the Rhode Island PBS YouTube channel.

Take a private tour with exhibit curators, get an inside look at the conservation process, and go behind the scenes to see hidden treasures.

Whether you are interested in artifacts, paintings, photography, architecture, or history, you'll be inspired to learn more.