Newport Community Organizations, Ade Bethune Papers

Adélaïde de Bethune (1914-2002), known as Ade Bethune, was born in Brussels, Belgium. She and her family immigrated to the United States and settled in New York in 1928. Here, she attended Cathedral High School, the National Academy of Design, and Cooper Union. Newport, Rhode Island became her permanent home in 1938. She purchased a house in Newport's Point neighborhood in 1953 and remained a resident of the Point until her death in 2002.

While she is primarily known for her work as a liturgical artist and architect, Bethune's experiences with the Catholic Worker movement, beginning in the 1930s, helped shape her social justice beliefs and develop skills in public speaking and writing. These experiences carried over into her social action activities with the many local organizations she supported later in life. Her interest and participation in Newport community groups and activities took root in the middle of the twentieth century, as witnessed by her collection of Point Association newsletters dating from the 1950’s.

The artistic and architectural skills Ade Bethune gained in her professional life were translated into her activities with many different organizations in Newport. Beginning in the 1960s Ade Bethune became involved with several community organizations and their work related to redevelopment projects. She drafted road and building plans and developed proposals in response to each groups’ support of or opposition to projects proposed by the public sector. Redevelopment plans for places such as the Broadway-West Broadway-Washington Square area also intersected with activities of other groups with which Bethune was involved, such as the Church Community Housing Corporation.

Ade Bethune's work with these organizations began in the late 1950s with membership in the Point Association. Over the course of her involvement with the association, Bethune served as a member of the Board and also as the chair of the Traffic Committee and the Circulation Committee. For a period in the late 1960s and early 1970s she was chairman of the East-West Point Committee, created in response to a proposed highway project that would divide the Point neighborhood. From 1989 to 1991, Bethune worked on the Citizens Advisory Committee of Newport to help in drafting a Comprehensive Land Use Plan under the authority of the Newport City Council. Following final development of the plan, a new group, the Foundation For Newport, was formed to help implement recommendations the plan had outlined. Bethune was on the steering committee of the Foundation For Newport as it started to organize in 1992 and remained on the committee until her death in 2002.

During this 45 year period, Ade Bethune was also a member of, worked with, or followed a number of other public and private civic groups operating in and around Newport including: the Point Neighborhood Association, the Commission on Affordable Housing, South End Association, Friends of the Waterfront, Save the Bay, and others.