The Breakers wins national This Place Matters contest
NEWPORT – Stunning even Trudy Coxe, executive director and CEO of The Preservation Society of Newport County, the Breakers won the first prize of $25,000 in the national This Place Matters contest.
The contest was sponsored by the National Trust for Historic Preservation and the Firemen’s Fund Insurance Company.
Even more than the $25,000 cash prize, Coxe told Providence Business News Thursday that she is “thrilled” by the fact that the contest saw so many people from so many places show support for the Breakers, one of 11 Newport historic properties that the society manages.
She reeled off a list of about a dozen organizations and individuals that cast votes for the Breakers and encouraged others to cast votes through impromptu email campaigns.
Barnaby Evans, well-known WaterFire creator, sent out an email blast asking WaterFire supporters to vote for the Breakers, Coxe said, as did such groups as the local Chambers of Commerce, the Providence Warwick Convention & Visitors Bureau and Grow Smart Rhode Island.
“It was phenomenal,” she said. “Usually nonprofits don’t help one another.”
Coxe said she learned of the Breakers’ victory when she spotted an unpretentious email last Friday after working hours. She read the email, which said the society won the grand prize, had a colleague double-check it to make certain she read it correctly and later called the national society to ensure the communication was genuine.
“What is so gratifying to me is that the Breakers won as the place that matters most,” she said, referring to the theme of the contest. She heard from voters who told her they were happy to vote for the Breakers because they felt it gave them a chance to be a part of the preservation society. “People do care a lot about preservation and historic buildings,” she said.
The national preservation society has not announced how many votes the Breakers’ received out of the 80,000 total that were cast for 100 sites during the month-long contest in June, but Coxe said the local mansion tallied about 21,000 votes and, in the last eight hours of voting on June 30, it picked up 4,700 votes.
Last year’s winner had just 7,000 votes, Coxe said, so the national response was greater this year than usual. Voting was done by email. Out of the 100 sites nationally, eight are in New England, she said.
Coxe said no decisions have been made yet as to how the money will be spent. “We have an unlimited need at all of our houses,” she said, “so we’re still thinking about what’s going to make everybody happy.”
Second-place winner of $10,000 was the Wellington Ritz Theatre Inc. in Wellington, Texas, and a third-place award of $5,000 went to Over-the-Rhine Foundation in Cincinnati, Ohio.
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