We recently made a trip to Newport Rhode Island. It was part of a year late senior trip for my youngest daughter that really wanted to see the east coast. I am not sure why they chose Newport other than I lived there for a year when I was very young and my father was at the War College there. The biggest attraction of Newport for tourists is the Cliff Walk. The walk is a 3.5 mile one way walk along the waterfront with beautiful ocean views on one side and mansions of the rich and famous on the other. I am hoping that @MatthewCrawley will tell us some gossip about former owners of these places as only he could do because I admit, I didn’t pay too much attention to the audio tours and spent my time taking pictures or shaking my head at the opulence.
The first one we passed of significance was Ochre Court which now serves as the main administration building for Salve Regina University. Commissioned by New York real estate magnate Ogden Goelet as his family’s summer residence, Ochre Court was designed by Richard Morris Hunt, America’s foremost architect of the late 19th century. We did not go inside but I can only imagine the tuition of a school that has this as the administration building?
Also part of Salve Regina is the Vineland mansion. It was built in 1883 and now known as Regina’s McAuley Hall. If you would like to learn more about the original owner of this, it is pretty interesting.
The Breakers is the most famous of the mansions and most popular to visit. The mansion features 70 rooms, a 45-foot high Great Hall, gold- and platinum-covered walls, and intricate panels with mythological beings. All these sit on a 13-acre estate overlooking the Atlantic Ocean. It was the Vanderbilt estate (insert @MatthewCrawley story here!)
I have no words for how crazy the interiors of these mansions are.
The kitchens were very interesting with one level for prep/cooking & another for most of the dishes. This oven/cook top was steam powered by water taken out of the ocean.
I don’t know the name of this next one and only saw the backside of it from the walk but holy shit, it is crazy huge!
This one was right on the point and looks like newer money to me. Wannabees!
The above Marble House is another of the more famous old money mansions. Another Vanderbilt summer house, William K. Vanderbilt gave to his wife for her 39th birthday.
Doesn’t everyone need a “reading room” larger than a church?
The above Elms is beyond obscene. I have tons of pictures but won’t bore you with all my statue and garden pics. If you need more.
We did a sailboat trip the day after our 11 mile walk of mansions. I was soooo excited to be sitting and my feet needed the break. The above is the childhood home of Jacqueline Bouvier you may know better as the wife of John Kennedy. It is called Hammersmith Farm. They were actually married on its grounds. The funny looking building in the front used to look like a windmill according to our boat captain that served as a playhouse for Jackie. I don’t know if that story is true as our captain was actually a WA transplant but we will go with that until proven untrue.
Finally, on this sailboat tour we saw a large house on a rock, only accessible by boat.
The story was it was a government building until that was destroyed by a hurricane. Instead of rebuilding it, they sold it to an architect who fixed what was left and made it a home. The captain said it is available on Air BnB now but I haven’t checked. The best part was as we got close to it and you could see the signs.
I hope you enjoyed my Lifestyles of the Rich & Famous tour. Have a great weekend. Big lottery tonight, maybe you can be the next to have a mansion like these?
Fantastic photos as always, @Loveshaq. I can in no way at all relate to all that wealth.
I’m far too exhausted to go into much detail, I’m afraid. The Vanderbilts alone…can you imagine what lengths I might go to when I got to Gloria “Poor Little Rich Girl” Vanderbilt?
I believe your mystery mansion (the one right on the Point) is Rough Point, owned by the late tobacco heiress Doris Duke. Here’s her wiki page and it has been scandalously santized of scandal, but she was quite a character:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doris_Duke
Of special interest to you:
Her second husband, Porfirio Rubirosa, was well-known for his charms, one in particular. He gives good wiki:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Porfirio_Rubirosa
Sunny von Bulow’s old stomping grounds Champ Soleil (you remember her and her loving husband Claus?) was recently put up for sale. Even more scandalous than the von Bulow residency was the fact that it was sold to a gay (male) couple and one of them has a last name that ends in a vowel:
https://www.newportri.com/story/news/local/2020/11/10/champ-soleil-mansion-once-owned-sunny-von-bulows-mother-sale/3760936001/
I didn’t know that about Doris Duke surfing but I have seen her house at Diamond Head many times, another mansion by Hawaii standards but nothing like the RI ones.
That first photo shows off one of the unusual things about Newport mansions which is how relatively close all of these are. The usual thing for the 19th Century mansion was to be pretty isolated on a big estate away from anyone. But Newport was a summer social hub like the Hamptons, and it was sort of like salmon season for bears which lose all of their usual territorial inhibitions for a little while.
Townhomes were a different thing — when there was business they’d live pretty close to one another in Manhattan or Beacon Hill. But then on weekends the country estates would be somewhere up in the highlands, presumably somewhere easily defensible from the mob.
They all seemed to be related or connected so it was just a playground for them.  They didn’t want to be too far from each other just far enough to show how big their grounds were.  Such a beautiful place in the summer but I can’t imagine them ever being there during the crazy storms that hit that shoreline.
Fucking robber barons.
Eat the rich.