| Hotel Viking | |
|---|---|
 Hotel Viking in 2021 | |
  Location in Rhode Island  Location in United States | |
| General information | |
| Architectural style | Colonial Revival |
| Location | 1 Bellevue Ave., Newport, Rhode Island |
| Coordinates | 41°29′15″N71°18′35″W / 41.487463°N 71.309852°W |
| Opened | May 25, 1926 [1] |
The Hotel Viking, or The Hotel Viking, in Newport, Rhode Island, is a historic hotel.
It is a five-story Colonial Revival building with, in 2020, 208 rooms or suites. The facility includes a fine-dining restaurant, a lounge, a seasonal bar & kitchen, regular afternoon tea service in its Garden Room, [2] [3] and a spa and sauna. [4]
It is located on Bellevue Avenue, a large part of which is included in Bellevue Avenue Historic District, listed on the National Register of Historic Places. The Bellevue Avenue Historic District was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1972 and was further designated a U.S. National Historic Landmark District in 1976. The district includes The Breakers, which is a Vanderbilt family mansion, and numerous other properties of the Gilded Age era, but not the Hotel Viking. [note 1]
The hotel was opened in 1926. [5] Investors included local businessmen Harry Titus, James O’Connell, and others, plus summer vacationers in the area such as William H. Vanderbilt, who formed "The American Hotels Corporation" to issue public stock and supervise construction during. [1] The hotel was originally built to accommodate guests of Newport's Gilded Age mansions. [6]
An outdoor pool was added in the "middle of the [twentieth] century" as part of a major renovation. [1]
During the early years of the Newport Folk and Jazz Festivals, hotel guests included Bob Dylan, [7] Johnny Cash, June Carter Cash, Ella Fitzgerald, [6] Bill Lee, [8] and many other festival performers. U.S. President John F. Kennedy is also said to have stayed at the hotel. [1]
The addition of a conference center couldn't stop the decline of the hotel "into disrepair" in the 1960s, when it was briefly known as "The Viking Hotel and Motor Inn." [1]
An $8 million renovation by new owners in the late 1990s brought improvements, and saw the hotel join the Historic Hotels of America in 1997. [5] Renovations again occurred in 2007 (to restore its rooms to "Gilded Age splendor") and in 2016. [1]
North Shore magazine said in 2021 that the hotel has both historic and modern wings, and "looks great for its age". [3]
Discover the elegant Colonial-style Hotel Viking, located in the Bellevue Avenue Historic District and within walking distance of the harbor.and see "The Viking Hotel: History -- about the location".
The Hotel Viking is located in the heart of Newport's Bellevue Avenue Historic District, a federally recognized National Historic Landmark.) but those claims appear not to be true. Description of bounds of the district in its 1976 NRHP document explain it goes north along Bellevue Avenue only as far as Memorial Boulevard, which is still south of the hotel.
Newport is a seaside city on Aquidneck Island in Rhode Island, United States. It is located in Narragansett Bay, approximately 33 miles (53 km) southeast of Providence, 20 miles (32 km) south of Fall River, Massachusetts, 74 miles (119 km) south of Boston, and 180 miles (290 km) northeast of New York City. It is known as a New England summer resort and is famous for its historic mansions and its rich sailing history. The city has a population of about 25,000 residents.
From the late 1870s to the 1920s, the Vanderbilt family employed some of the best Beaux-Arts architects and decorators in the United States to build a notable string of townhouses in New York City and palaces on the East Coast of the United States. Many of the Vanderbilt houses are now National Historic Landmarks. Some photographs of Vanderbilt residences in New York are included in the Photographic series of American Architecture by Albert Levy (1870s).
Belcourt is a former summer cottage designed by architect Richard Morris Hunt for Oliver Hazard Perry Belmont and located on Bellevue Avenue in Newport, Rhode Island. Construction was begun in 1891 and completed in 1894, and it was intended to be used for only six to eight weeks of the year. Belcourt was designed in a multitude of European styles and periods; it features a heavy emphasis on French Renaissance and Gothic decor, with further borrowings from German, English, and Italian design. In the Gilded Age, the castle was noted for its extensive stables and carriage areas, which were incorporated into the main structure.
The Breakers is a Gilded Age mansion located at 44 Ochre Point Avenue, Newport, Rhode Island, US. It was built between 1893 and 1895 as a summer residence for Cornelius Vanderbilt II, a member of the wealthy Vanderbilt family.
The Newport Casino is an athletic complex and recreation center located at 180–200 Bellevue Avenue, Newport, Rhode Island in the Bellevue Avenue/Casino Historic District. Built in 1879–1881 by New York Herald publisher James Gordon Bennett, Jr., it was designed in the Shingle style by the newly formed firm of McKim, Mead & White. The Newport Casino was the firm's first major commission and helped to establish the firm's national reputation. Built as a social club, it included courts for both lawn tennis and court tennis, facilities for other games, such as squash and lawn bowling, club rooms for reading, socializing, card-playing, and billiards, shops, and a convertible theater and ballroom. It became a center of Newport's social life during the Gilded Age through the 1920s.
The Breakers was a Queen Anne style cottage designed by Peabody and Stearns for Pierre Lorillard IV and located along the Cliff Walk on Ochre Point Avenue, Newport, Rhode Island. In 1883, it was referred to as "unquestionably the most magnificent estate in Newport."
The Elms is a large mansion located at 367 Bellevue Avenue, Newport, Rhode Island, completed in 1901. The architect Horace Trumbauer (1868–1938) designed it for the coal baron Edward Julius Berwind (1848–1936), taking inspiration from the 18th century Château d'Asnières in Asnières-sur-Seine, France. C. H. Miller and E. W. Bowditch, working closely with Trumbauer, designed the gardens and landscape. The Preservation Society of Newport County purchased The Elms in 1962, and opened the house to the public. The Elms was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1971, and designated a National Historic Landmark in 1996.
Marble House, a Gilded Age mansion located at 596 Bellevue Avenue in Newport, Rhode Island, was built from 1888 to 1892 as a summer cottage for Alva and William Kissam Vanderbilt and was designed by Richard Morris Hunt in the Beaux Arts style. It was unparalleled in opulence for an American house when it was completed in 1892. Its temple-front portico has been compared to that of the White House.
Chateau-sur-Mer is one of the first grand Bellevue Avenue mansions of the Gilded Age in Newport, Rhode Island. Located at 474 Bellevue Avenue, it is now owned by the Preservation Society of Newport County and is open to the public as a museum. Chateau-sur-Mer's grand scale and lavish parties ushered in the Gilded Age of Newport, as it was the most palatial residence in Newport until the Vanderbilt houses in the 1890s. It was designated a National Historic Landmark in 2006.
Rough Point is one of the Gilded Age mansions of Newport, Rhode Island, now open to the public as a museum. It is an English Manorial style home designed by architectural firm Peabody & Stearns for Frederick William Vanderbilt. Construction on the red sandstone and granite began in 1887 and was completed 1892. It is located on Bellevue Avenue and borders the Cliff Walk and overlooks the Atlantic Ocean. The original gardens were designed by Frederick Law Olmsted’s firm. The home's last owner was Doris Duke and it is currently owned and operated by the Newport Restoration Foundation.
Vernon Court is an American Renaissance mansion designed by architects Carrère and Hastings. It is located at 492 Bellevue Avenue, Newport, Rhode Island, on the Atlantic coast of the United States. The design is loosely based on that of an 18th-century French mansion, Château d'Haroué.
Beechwood is a Gilded Age mansion and estate located at 580 Bellevue Avenue in Newport, Rhode Island best known for having been owned by the Astor family. Part of the Bellevue Avenue Historic District, the first version of the residence was built between 1852 and 1853 and designed in the Italianate style by Andrew Jackson Downing and Calvert Vaux. Following a fire in 1855, Vaux rebuilt the house with modified plans. Richard Morris Hunt renovated the estate in 1881 after it was bought the year before by William Backhouse Astor, Jr.
Kingscote is a Gothic Revival mansion and house museum at Bowery Street and Bellevue Avenue in Newport, Rhode Island, designed by Richard Upjohn and built in 1839. As one of the first summer "cottages" constructed in Newport, it is now a National Historic Landmark. It was remodeled and extended by George Champlin Mason and later by Stanford White. It was owned by the King family from 1864 until 1972, when it was given to the Preservation Society of Newport County.
The Bellevue Avenue Historic District is located along and around Bellevue Avenue in Newport, Rhode Island, United States. Its property is almost exclusively residential, including many of the Gilded Age mansions built as summer retreats around the turn of the 20th century by the extremely wealthy, including the Vanderbilt and Astor families. Many of the homes represent pioneering work in the architectural styles of the time by major American architects.
The Newport Historic District is a historic district that covers 250 acres in the center of Newport in the U.S. state of Rhode Island. It was designated a National Historic Landmark (NHL) in 1968 due to its extensive and well-preserved assortment of intact colonial buildings dating from the early and mid-18th century. Six of those buildings are themselves NHLs in their own right, including the city's oldest house and the former meeting place of the colonial and state legislatures. Newer and modern buildings coexist with the historic structures.
The Kay Street–Catherine Street–Old Beach Road Historic District is a historic district in Newport, Rhode Island. The area is located north of Newport's well-known Bellevue Avenue, and encompasses an area that was developed residentially between about 1830 and 1890, for the most part before the Gilded Age mansions were built further south. The district is bounded on the south by Memorial Boulevard, on the east by Easton's Pond, on the west by Bellevue Avenue and Kay and Bull Streets, and on the north by Broadway, Rhode Island Avenue, Prairie Avenue, and Champlin Street. The district was added to the National Register of Historic Places on May 22, 1973, with a boundary decrease in 2018.
The Ochre Point–Cliffs Historic District is a historic district in Newport, Rhode Island. The district includes a significant subset of the Bellevue Avenue Historic District, a National Historic Landmark District, including all of the major Gilded Age mansions on the waterfront facing Easton Bay between Memorial Boulevard and Marine Avenue. The district is home to famous mansions such as the William Watts Sherman House and The Breakers, one of the largest houses in the area built by the Vanderbilt Family. The district was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1975.
The Bellevue Avenue/Casino Historic District encompasses a one-block section of Bellevue Avenue in Newport, Rhode Island. Although Bellevue Avenue is best known for the large number of Gilded Age mansions which line it, especially further south, this block is a coherent collection of commercial buildings at the northern end of the mansion row. It is anchored around the Newport Casino, now the International Tennis Hall of Fame, and includes three other buildings on the east side of Bellevue Avenue between Memorial Boulevard and East Bowery Street.
Beaulieu, or Beaulieu House, is a historic mansion located on Bellevue Avenue in Newport, Rhode Island, built in 1859 by Federico Barreda. Subsequent owners of Beaulieu have included John Jacob Astor III, Cornelius Vanderbilt III, and his wife Grace Vanderbilt, née Grace Graham Wilson.
Historic Hotels of America is a program of the National Trust for Historic Preservation that was founded in 1989 with 32 charter members; the program identifies hotels in the United States that have maintained authenticity, sense of place, and architectural integrity from their respective time periods.