Born in 1898 in Corry, Pennsylvania, Newton graduated from Cornell University in 1919, receiving his master's degree in landscape design, also from Cornell, in 1920.. A winner of the Prix de Rome in 1923, he spent three years as a resident fellow at the American Academy in Rome, where he studied the gardens of Italian villas, training for his future as a landscape architect.

He was appointed resident landscape architect for the northeastern region of the National Park Service and redesigned the setting for the Statue of Liberty.

His other public-works projects included master plans for the Custom House at Derby Wharf in Salem, Mass., and for Saratoga Battlefield National History Park.

He returned to Italy in World War II as senior monuments officer, first with the 330th Air Service Group and then attached to the British Eighth Army.

[1] Newton held the rank of lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Army Air Force, as a Monuments, Fine Arts, and Archives (MFAA) Officer.