The Whitehall Museum House is the farmhouse modified by Dean George Berkeley, when he lived in the northern section of Newport, Rhode Island that comprises present-day Middletown in 1729-31, while working to open his planned St Paul's College on Bermuda. It is also known as Berkeley House or Bishop George Berkeley House and was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1970.HistoryGeorge Berkeley (1685-1753) — or Bishop Berkeley, the famous Anglo-Irish philosopher — disembarked from his ship in the harbor of Newport, Rhode Island, on Thursday, 23 January 1729. The Reverend James Honyman, minister of Trinity Church, Newport, Rhode Island welcomed Berkeley and the group that accompanied him, inviting him to stay in his home in Newport until he could find accommodation elsewhere. In February 1729, Berkeley purchased a 96acre farm with a small house on it, adjacent to Honeyman's own farm. Berkeley enlarged the house to his own design and named it "Whitehall," saying that this was "in loyal remembrance of the palace of the English Kings from Henry VIII to James II." During the period he lived in this house, he wrote his book Alciphron, and occasionally preached for Rev'd Honeyman at nearby Trinity Church, and for Rev'd James McSparran at the St Paul's Church, Wickord (The Old Narragansett Church). In Newport, he founded the Philosophical Society, which eventually developed into the Redwood Library. Berkeley wrote to his friend Thomas Prior of Dublin, Ireland that Newport 'exhibited some of the softest rural and grandest ocean scenery in the world'.
