Central Park, Brooklyn Bridge Recommended as Cultural Sites

Central Park and the Brooklyn Bridge in New York have been recommended as cultural sites to be added to the U.S. Tentative List of World Heritage Site nominations, along with Ellis Island in New York and New Jersey, the Moravian Bethlehem District in Pennsylvania, and Chicago’s early skyscrapers.

Newport and Providence in Rhode Island, where the tenets of separation of church and state and religious tolerance were established, have been excluded from the tentative list of World Heritage Site nominations.

The Rhode Island Charter of 1663 was written by a Newport Baptist minister.

The Newport World Heritage Commission had been tasked with preparing a revised nomination proposal for Newport and Providence. The Newport Daily News reports the commission will disband at the end of 2016. Members have asked Gov. Gina Raimondo to re-establish it or create a new one.