This Small Town Used to Be the Fourth Largest City in America

By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Jan 11, 9:57AM EST · Published Mar 17, 7:21AM EDT

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This Small Town Used to Be the Fourth Largest City in America — © DenisTangneyJr / Getty Images

Several of America’s largest cities today were also the largest cities in the United States before it became the United States in 1789. However, a town that barely qualifies as a city in 2019 was the fourth largest in the country in the late 1600s and early 1700s.

In 1720, Boston was America’s largest city with a population of 12,000. Boston was followed by Philadelphia with 10,000 and New York with 7,000. Newport, Rhode Island, was fourth with a population of 3,800. While New York City’s population has risen 1,157 times since 1720, Newport’s is up only seven times and it has a population of just over 25,000 today. As a matter of fact, New York City has become one of the 50 largest in the world.

Newport was founded in 1689. It became a trade center just after that time. As a whaling port, it was one of the biggest providers of sperm whale oil in New England. Among other industries then were the manufacturer of ships and textiles. The major religious groups in Newport at the time were Quakers and Jews.

Newport eventually became a center for the slave trade. According to the Newport Historical Society, “a central paradox in Newport and Rhode Island’s early history was the combination of a commitment to liberty in the religious realm with a willingness to participate in the practice of enslaving other human beings.”

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Today, Newport’s primary industry is tourism. Among the reasons people come for vacation is to see the massive mansions built along the water. Rich Americans, mainly from New York and Boston, built these homes designed by leading architects. This includes the famous Breakers built by railroad magnate Cornelius Vanderbilt II in 1893. The house had 70 rooms and was designed to look like Italian palaces from the 1600s. Ironically, Newport has some of Rhode Island’s largest areas of low-income housing.

Newport has so many visitors in the summer that according to travel site Trivago it has 309 hotels. Many are built so that they have views of Rhode Island Sound. The entire west side of the city is along the water and is attached to the rest of Rhode Island on that side by Newport Bridge, which goes to Jamestown.

Unlike some of America’s largest cities today, Newport is shrinking and has lost over a third of its population since 1960. But, for the time being, it is not one of America’s fastest shrinking cities.
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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.