Newport is a seaside city on Aquidneck Island in Newport County, Rhode Island. 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. It was the location of the first U.S. Open tournaments in both tennis and golf, as well as every challenge to the America's Cup between 1930 and 1983. It is also the home of Salve Regina University and Naval Station Newport, which houses the United States Naval War College, the Naval Undersea Warfare Center, and an important Navy training center. It was a major 18th-century port city and boasts many buildings from the Colonial era.
From the late 1870s to the 1920s, the Vanderbilt family employed some of the United States's best Beaux-Arts architects and decorators to build an unequalled string of townhouses in New York City and East Coast palaces in the United States. Many of the Vanderbilt houses are now National Historic Landmarks. Some photographs of Vanderbilt's 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 70-room mansion, with a gross area of 125,339 square feet (11,644.4 m2) and 62,482 square feet (5,804.8 m2) of living area on five floors, was designed by Richard Morris Hunt in the Renaissance Revival style; the interior decor was by Jules Allard and Sons and Ogden Codman Jr. The Ochre Point Avenue entrance is marked by sculpted iron gates, and the 30-foot-high (9.1 m) walkway gates are part of a 12-foot-high (3.7 m) limestone-and-iron fence that borders the property on all but the ocean side. The footprint of the house covers approximately 1 acre (4,000 m2) or 43,000 square feet of the 14 acres (5.7 ha) estate on the cliffs overlooking Easton Bay of the Atlantic Ocean.
Biltmore Estate is a historic house museum and tourist attraction in Asheville, North Carolina. Biltmore House, the main residence, is a Châteauesque-style mansion built for George Washington Vanderbilt II between 1889 and 1895 and is the largest privately owned house in the United States, at 178,926 sq ft (16,622.8 m2) of floor space. Still owned by George Vanderbilt's descendants, it remains one of the most prominent examples of Gilded Age mansions.
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 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.
The Preservation Society of Newport County is a private, non-profit organization based in Newport, Rhode Island. It is Rhode Island's largest and most-visited cultural organization. The organization protects the architectural heritage of Newport County, especially the Bellevue Avenue Historic District. Seven of its 14 historic properties and landscapes are National Historic Landmarks, and most are open to the public.
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 resembles 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 424 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.
The William Watts Sherman House is a notable house designed by American architect H. H. Richardson, with later interiors by Stanford White. It is a National Historic Landmark, generally acknowledged as one of Richardson's masterpieces and the prototype for what became known as the Shingle Style in American architecture. It is located at 2 Shepard Avenue, Newport, Rhode Island and is now owned by Salve Regina University. It is a contributing property to the Bellevue Avenue Historic District.
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.
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 by affluent summer vacationers in the city around the turn of the 20th century, including the Vanderbilt family and Astor family. 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 Ocean Drive Historic District is a historic district that covers the long street of the same name along the southern shore of Newport, Rhode Island, United States. It was designated a National Historic Landmark District in 1976, in recognition for its distinctive landscape and architecture, which is less formal and generally not as ostentatious as the grand summer properties of Bellevue Avenue.
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 programs accepts nominations and identifies hotels that have maintained their authenticity, sense of place, and architectural integrity. As of June 5, 2015, the program included over 260 members in 44 states, including the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands.
