History of Goddard Memorial State Park

Goddard Memorial State Park was given to Rhode Island in 1927 by the son and daughter of Colonel Robert Hale Ives Goddard, in memory of their father. The gift was nearly 490 acres of family estate on Ives Road in the Potowomut section of Warwick, on Greenwich Cove and Greenwich Bay, and the park formally opened in 1930.

Who Colonel Goddard Was

RI DEM's park history describes Robert Hale Ives Goddard as a son of William G. Goddard, the first Chancellor of Brown University, and of Charlotte Rhoda Ives Goddard. Through his mother he was tied to the Ives family, partners with the Browns of Providence in the merchant firm of Brown and Ives. He graduated from Brown in 1858.

When the Civil War began he left the family counting house, enlisted as a private and fought at the first Battle of Bull Run. He later served as an aide to General Ambrose Burnside, took part in the battles of Fredericksburg, Cumberland Gap, Blue Springs and Campbell Station, served at the sieges of Knoxville and Petersburg, and was present at Lee's surrender at Appomattox Court House. After the war he served the state again and retired with the rank of colonel. He sat in the state senate as an independent in 1907 and 1908, and in 1907 he ran for the open United States Senate seat against Samuel P. Colt and George P. Wetmore. (Colt's own estate in Bristol is now Colt State Park.)

Potowomut: The Land Before the Park

The park sits on Potowomut Neck in Warwick. DEM traces its history to the early settlement of Warwick and Samuel Gorton's Shawomet Purchase, much of which was burned in King Philip's War in 1675–1676. Potowomut was an ancestral home of the Greene family, which produced two colonial governors, Major General Nathanael Greene and Colonel Christopher Greene. The first Greene, James, settled there in 1684, and Nathanael Greene's father ran an iron forge near today's park, which is where Forge Road gets its name.

In 1792 Nicholas Brown, one of the four Brown brothers of Providence, bought up the indebted lands of the Loyalist Richard Greene. The farm passed to his daughter Hope Brown when she married Thomas Poynton Ives, and the Brown and Ives country estate on most of Potowomut Neck became known as "Hopelands".

The Oaks and the Specimen Trees

The estate passed down through the family to Charlotte Ives Goddard. In the next generation, Hope Brown Ives and her husband Henry C. Russell built the mansion known as "The Oaks", the centrepiece of the land later given for the park. Russell collected specimen trees from around the world: DEM counts 62 deciduous species and 19 varieties of evergreen. The estate had been developed as a private arboretum, and DEM says much of the landscape was already laid out in a park setting when the state received it.

The trees survived storm damage, including the Hurricane of 1938. The 1876 Victorian mansion did not: The Oaks burned in April 1975.

The 1927 Gift and the 1930 Opening

Along with the land, the 1927 gift included the 33-room mansion, a smaller home for the state's horticulturalist, a carriage house, a large barn and several smaller buildings. Goddard joined Rhode Island's Metropolitan Park System and, by DEM's account, balanced it geographically by serving people in Kent County. Lincoln Woods and Goddard both offered horseback riding, but Goddard added salt-water swimming, better sailing and golf. For a time the mansion housed an "insect zoo". DEM also notes that the gift pointed toward adding Atlantic beaches to the system, which came with Sand Hill Cove in 1929 and Scarborough in 1937.

The Loof Carousel

The park's best-remembered feature was its carousel. It was built in 1890 at the Charles I. D. Loof factory in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, and ran in Syracuse, New York, before being repaired in 1901 at Loof's shop in the Riverside section of East Providence. It went to the Rocky Point amusement park in 1907 and ran there until 1929. Two years later, in 1931, it was installed at Goddard, where it turned until it was sold and taken apart in 1973. It was meant for California but ended up in Jacksonville, Florida.

The man who looked after the ride for most of its life was Joseph L. Carrolo, who worked for the Loof organisation and managed the carousel in Syracuse, at Rocky Point and finally at Goddard. In 1958 he ran carousels at Oakland Beach, Lake Mishnock, Goddard and Lake Nipmuc in Mendon, Massachusetts, and by 1978, at age 100, he was known as the "Carousel King". The empty carousel pavilion has since been refurbished and is rented for events; see the carousel guide.

The 1930s at Goddard

During Rhode Island's 300th-anniversary Tercentenary in 1936, Goddard hosted a Native American village and the state's history pageants. Dozens of new picnic fireplaces were built in the Depression years, and DEM credits young men of the Civilian Conservation Corps, who worked across Rhode Island's parks and forests and helped clean up after the 1938 hurricane. From 1936 until 1940 the state's park division had its headquarters at Goddard.

The Park Today

DEM calls Goddard Rhode Island's most popular Metropolitan Park. It still follows the donors' wish that the land be "for the public use and for the enjoyment, recreation, and education of the public", with its beach, nine-hole golf course, bridle trails and picnic groves.