After graduating from Columbia, Newton was the Director of Historical Research for Webster Publishing Company in St. Louis, Missouri. His first post in a long career in cultural heritage was as the director of the Vermont Historical Society in Barre, Vermont, where he worked from 1942–1950. During this time, he helped found two magazines, American Heritage and Vermont Life.[3] From 1944–1946, he took a two-year hiatus from Vermont during World War II to serve in the U.S. Navy as a lieutenant at Pearl Harbor.
In 1959, Newton was hired to serve as the executive director of the newly established St. Augustine Historical Restoration and Preservation Commission, whose goal was to restore and reconstruct historic buildings in downtown St. Augustine, Florida.[7] They hoped these buildings would become part of a Spanish colonial museum village in similar fashion to Colonial Williamsburg or Old Sturbridge Village.[8] He also became the director-general of the National Quadricentennial Commission, a committee appointed by President John F. Kennedy to plan St. Augustine's 400th anniversary celebration.[9] In 1962, he became the president of St. Augustine Restoration, Inc., a foundation created by the St. Augustine Historical Restoration and Preservation Commission to raise private funds for restoration work in the city.[10]
The fact that the St. Augustine program was all-white in its conception and implemention brought it into conflict with the civil rights movement of the 1960s, and resulted in widely publicized demonstrations in the Ancient City, led by Dr. Robert Hayling and Dr. Martin Luther King. Newton, along with St. Augustine Mayor Joseph Shelley went on the "Today Show" on national television to criticize the civil rights movement in 1964--a story told in Pulitzer-prizewinning author Taylor Branch's "Pillar of Fire" (Simon & Schuster, 1998).
Newton resigned as director of the Commission in 1968[7] and became the director of the Pensacola Historical Restoration and Preservation Commission.[11] He founded the Museum of the Americas in Brookfield, Vermont and was a professor in art at Norwich College in Northfield, Vermont.[12] This museum, which was housed in an old church, was visited by art dealer Philip Mould and found to contain over three hundred works by artists such as William Hogarth and Joseph Wright of Derby, as well as American painters such as Gilbert Stuart and Robert Feke.[13] When Mould made his visit, however, the paintings were found to be "mostly in various stages decay, with layers of mildew covering their surfaces" and Mould described it as "not a museum collection, it was a hidden hoard."[13]
He later returned to St. Augustine to once again serve as director of the Commission, since renamed the Historic St. Augustine Preservation Board. The Preservation Board was abolished by the State of Florida in 1997 in accordance with the Sundown Act.[14]
Personal life and legacy
Newton died on May 24, 2006, in Ponte Vedra, Florida at the age of 89. Newton married his wife Josephine in 1937, and they had two children, Antoinette and Earle III.[15]