Ralph Carpenter, connoisseur of Colonial furniture; at 99

RALPH CARPENTER

NEW YORK - Ralph E. Carpenter, a self-taught connoisseur of Colonial furniture and decorative art whose passion for Newport, R.I., spurred him to restore many of its most important 18th-century landmarks, died Feb. 2 in Newport. He was 99.

The death was confirmed by his wife, Roberta.

Mr. Carpenter had deep roots in Rhode Island, although he did not grow up there. A descendant of William Carpenter, who helped found Providence, he was born in Woonsocket, R.I., and spent childhood summers at a family summer home in Matunuck, across the bay from Newport. In the 1940s, while antiques-hunting in New England, he revisited the city and was dismayed by the rundown appearance of many of its buildings.

Opportunity knocked in 1945, when a group of preservationists bought Hunter House in Newport, a mid-18th-century Georgian dwelling scheduled for demolition, and turned it over to the newly formed Preservation Society of Newport County. Mr. Carpenter was named to oversee its restoration.

In addition to restoring Hunter House, Mr. Carpenter helped fill it with furniture from the workshops of Newport's two great cabinet-making dynasties, the Townsend and Goddard families. At the same time, he wrote "The Arts and Crafts of Newport, Rhode Island, 1640-1820" (1954), one of the first books to make the case for America's Colonial cabinetmakers as equals of their European counterparts.

After Longfellow's Wayside Inn in Sudbury, Mass., burned down in 1955, its trustees asked Mr. Carpenter to supervise its reconstruction.

"He was one of the greats in the field of American furniture and in American preservation," said Morrison H. Heckscher, the chairman of the American Wing of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Ralph Emerson Carpenter Jr. graduated from Cornell in 1931 with a degree in mechanical engineering and a job offer from Alcoa, which was withdrawn as the Depression deepened. He started selling life insurance on commission, first in Toledo, Ohio, where his father ran an auto-parts manufacturing business, and later in New York.

In 1932 he married Cynthia Ramsey. The marriage ended in divorce. In addition to his second wife, the former Roberta Lowy, he leaves a daughter, Cynthia Linton of Chicago; one grandchild; and three great-grandchildren.

When American companies began establishing pension plans, Mr. Carpenter set up as a pension consultant and prospered.

In his spare time Mr. Carpenter haunted New York auction houses, initially to pick up cheap furniture for his apartment in Scarsdale, N.Y. He began taking a more serious approach after an antiques dealer visited him, took one look at his bargains, and said, "Carpenter, everything's got to go."

Everything did. Weekdays, after gulping down a chicken sandwich and a milkshake at Schrafft's, Mr. Carpenter would visit Manhattan dealers, acquiring Hepplewhites and Sheratons.