The district encompasses an area of 606 acres (245 ha) bounded by Block Island Sound and Narragansett Bay to the south and east, respectively, Spring Street and Coggeshall Avenue to the west, and Memorial Boulevard to the north.

During the colonial era and the decades after independence, most of Newport's development remained around its downtown area, where port facilities, the mainstay of the city's economy, were.

Early in the 19th century, visitors to the city in the summer months came to appreciate the moderating effects of the sea breezes and the panoramic ocean views.

They began building cottages along the higher ground where Bellevue Avenue, then a lightly traveled farm path, now runs.

In 1839, George Noble Jones, a Southern plantation owner, built Kingscote, a Carpenter Gothic building considered the first of the city's mansions.

The Civil War and the years leading up to it slowed further development in the area, but then it picked up again during the economic prosperity of the Gilded Age in the later decades of the 19th century.

William Kissam Vanderbilt's Marble House in 1888 helped spark the transformation of Newport with stone as a building material, Beaux Arts as a style, and set a new standard for size.

The onset of the Depression began to change this, as some families, faced with dwindling fortunes, turned their houses over to the public or private nonprofits such as the Preservation Society of Newport County.

In 1972 the city applied to the National Park Service to combine all three and expand them into the current Bellevue Avenue district.

[12] The HDC must review any exterior alterations to a building in the district beyond ordinary maintenance and repair, and issue a Certificate of Appropriateness.