A few weeks ago, we found ourselves in Newport, Rhode Island, where our cherished friends held a wonderful wedding celebration for their child.
We’ve been to Newport ages ago, on a targeted exploration of the Gilded Age mansions in the Preservation Society of Newport County portfolio. This time around, participating in the full occasion-driven schedule was the main objective, but it wouldn’t be us if we did not find pockets of time for sightseeing.
Of the mansions that we’ve been to before, we decided to go and see the Marble House again.
Built by a scion of the Vanderbilt dynasty for his wife, it is one of the most lavish mansions in town – and a veritable trailblazer of Gilded Age opulence. The interior spaces on the main floor are jaw-droppingly luxurious, incorporating over half a million cubic feet of imported marble.
Throughout the main floor, golden reliefs drive home the notion that this is a Gilded Age exemplar.
The splendor of the surroundings is further accentuated by rich accessories, design details, and various artifacts.
The Gothic Room is a standout of a different kind, a superb museum-like space designed to evoke a feeling of the Old World.
The upper floor is home to bedrooms and studies, impressively appointed and furnished throughout.
The kitchen in a grand mansion is frequently a fascinating space in its own right.
The Chinese Tea House was originally built as a grounds ornament, and evolved to act in season as a restaurant offering prix-fixe brunch and afternoon tea service.
The view from the rear across the grounds at the Beaux-Arts mansion that is definitely one of the most impressive in Newport.
Kingscote is rather different.
We did not get to see it on our first trip to Newport, so we prioritized getting there this time around. The Gothic Revival building predates the Gilded Age by a few decades, but it was expanded and renovated around the same time period that the most lavish mansions were built elsewhere in Newport.
The earlier origins mean that Kingscote’s interior spaces are all on a more intimate scale, leaning away from ostentation towards livability. Luxurious after their own fashion nonetheless.
The original owners abandoned the house during the Civil War, and a successful China trade merchant, William Henry King, bought the estate in 1864. By 1881, the family officially renamed the building as “Kingscote” – which is an Old English term for “King’s Cottage” – and added a dining room, the only space in the house that truly vies for the label of dramatic, featuring a Japanese-inspired cork ceiling, colonial woodwork, and opalescent glass bricks.
Elaborate furniture and collections of Asian porcelain, paintings, and other objets d’art catch the eye in every room.
The bedrooms on the upper floor continue the theme.
Notice the heating radiator in the shot above – this was one of the first mansions in Newport to enjoy central heating. The medical scales in the bathroom are also not something you frequently see in buildings of this kind.
There is also a tiny child’s study-and-play room.
Some may find Kingscote over-cluttered and not sufficiently grandiose, but we were rather impressed.
We also stopped by another mansion in the Preservation Society system, the Isaac Bell House.
Considered a masterpiece of American Shingle Style architecture, it was built by the same architects who remodeled Kingscote around the peak of the Gilded Age construction.
A blend of styles – English Queen Anne, Colonial American, along with clear Japanese architectural influences – the house features many innovations, such as an open floor plan, sliding pocket doors, and large windows that aim to extend indoor spaces. These and other architectural decisions influenced building designs on a broad scale, including, for instance, Frank Lloyd Wright’s Robie House in Chicago, which is part of the UNESCO World Heritage list.
The visual parallels between Robie House and Isaac Bell House are underscored by the fact that neither is especially densely furnished.
IMHO, it is hard to appreciate an innovative building if it appears mostly empty. When the benefits to the former inhabitants offered by the house’s architectural and design features need to be visualized – as opposed to observed – the impact of various innovations remains somewhat abstract.
The nice docents did their best to explain to us various outstanding features of the house and point out superb decorative details.
The woodwork that incorporates antique Breton furniture panels in the fireplace alcove is probably the most impressive visual feature of the house.
All Newport mansions cost exactly the same to visit; in the case of Isaac Bell House, the entry fee may feel a bit excessive. Unlike other properties, I would only recommend it to people with a surpassing interest in architecture. I count myself in that bracket, and I still mark this visit as no more than ok (which, distressingly, suggests that my own interest in the subject may well lack depth).
One other outfit manages a portfolio of historic houses in Newport. The Newport Restoration Foundation was founded by the tobacco and energy heiress Doris Duke, who was once known as “the richest girl in the world” upon inheriting her father’s fortune at a very young age. Her monumental Newport residence, Rough Point, is the showpiece property, a late Gilded Age mansion originally built by yet another Vanderbilt that was acquired by the Dukes in 1922.
Doris Duke updated and redecorated Rough Point throughout her 50+ years of living there, filling the grand house with all kinds of art. It may be slightly counterintuitive to view the halls of what is really a palace through the prism of livability, but Rough Point is essentially a house museum, retaining all of the features and accoutrements of Doris Duke’s life here in the mid-20th century.
Superb art collections of various kinds make the place a veritable art museum as well.
The upper floor rooms, as elsewhere, tone down grandiosity – just a smidgen – in favor of high-end personal comforts.
And the kitchen on the lower servants’ floor is, as always, a captivating piece of the ensemble.
Doris Duke kept a variety of pet animals on the grounds, including a pair of camels that are today commemorated in arboreal sculpture.
The view of Rough Point from the rear.
The mansion is located directly on the coast, facing the Atlantic Ocean. The bridge in the picture below is part of the famous Cliff Walk that runs along the edge of the peninsula, adjacent to several waterfront mansions.
Practically all of the main grand residences of the Gilded Age are located along the celebrated two-mile stretch of Bellevue Avenue. Many houses in that area, however, remain in private ownership and are not open as museums. These mansions are usually well hidden from the road behind the trees.
Since we did not visit a ton of properties this time around, here are visuals of three other grand mansions managed by the Preservation Society from our first trip to Newport a dozen-plus years ago.
The Breakers is the main headliner of the entire portfolio, considered to be the most opulent and representative of the Gilded Age.
Due to its “must-see” status among all of the properties, it is the only one nowadays that requires an advance time-bound reservation to see. All others can be visited in a walk-in fashion.
The Elms, very clearly evoking a French palace – it was modeled after the mid-18th-century Château d’Asnières near Paris – is definitely in the top three with respect to lavish interiors (the Breakers and the Marble House would be the other two).
And Château-sur-Mer, built a few decades before the Gilded Age in the Italianate villa style, was our favorite on the first trip, more comparable to Kingscote in terms of size and interior decorations.
This last picture appeared on this blog in the early stages of my renewed fascination with photography all those years ago, as an example of post-processing improvements that can make a relatively drab rainy-day picture into something dramatic and attractive. (There is a clear comparison with the preceding shot.)
We’ll take a look at Newport beyond mansions in the subsequent installment.