John N. A. Griswold House

Last updated

John N. A. Griswold House
Newport Art Museum (John N. A. Griswold House).jpg
USA Rhode Island location map.svg
Red pog.svg
Usa edcp location map.svg
Red pog.svg
John N. A. Griswold House
Interactive map showing the location of Griswold House
Location76 Bellevue Ave, Newport, RI
Coordinates 41°29′9″N71°18′32″W / 41.48583°N 71.30889°W / 41.48583; -71.30889
Area2.41 acres (0.98 ha) [1]
Built1864
Architect Richard Morris Hunt
Architectural style American Stick Style
Part of Kay Street-Catherine Street-Old Beach Road Historic District (ID73000052)
NRHP reference No. 71000023
Significant dates
Added to NRHPNovember 5, 1971 [2]
Designated NHLMay 16, 2000 [3]
Designated CPMay 22, 1973

The John N. A. Griswold House is a historic house located at 76 Bellevue Avenue in Newport, Rhode Island. It was built in 1864 for John Noble Alsop Griswold, an Old China Trade merchant and member of the Griswold Family, and was designed by Richard Morris Hunt in the American Stick style, one of the earliest buildings in that style, and one of Hunt's first works in Newport.

Contents

The house was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1971, and was designated a National Historic Landmark in 2000. It is now one of the galleries of the Newport Art Museum, and is a project of Save America’s Treasures.

Description and history

The Griswold House is a 2+12-story wood-frame structure, set on a granite foundation, on a parcel that was landscaped in the early 19th century to a design by the Olmsted Brothers. It has a complex roofline, whose main mansarded section is pierced by numerous gable and dormer sections. The roof is finished with bands of polychrome slate, and is enhanced by chimneys with concrete caps and decorative panels. There are numerous balconies sheltered by deep eaves, with gable ends decorated with applied Stick style woodwork. An expansive veranda wraps around the southern and western sides of the house, with an elaborately-decorated port-cochere on the north side. [1] [3]

The exterior Stick style theme of applied woodwork is continued inside, where the public rooms feature extensive woodwork, and richly decorated spaces. A number of rooms are either partially or completely octagonal in shape, including the main hall, the dining room, and the library. The main hall features an elaborately decorated staircase, with a carved griffin statue standing guard at its base. [1]

The house was designed by Richard Morris Hunt and built in 1864 for John Noble Alsop Griswold, a merchant in the China Trade. It was the first of Hunt's many notable works in Newport, and is considered a prototype work of the Stick style of architecture. Griswold died in the house in 1909; it remained vacant until 1915, when it was acquired by the Art Association of Newport, which now uses it as a museum gallery. The association is one of the oldest organizations of its type in the United States. [1]

The house was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1971, and was designated a National Historic Landmark in 2000, in recognition for its architectural significance and its association with the Art Association of Newport. [1] [2]

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">The Breakers</span> Vanderbilt mansion in Newport, Rhode Island, US

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.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Marble House</span> Historic house in Rhode Island, United States

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.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Chateau-sur-Mer</span> Historic house in Rhode Island, United States

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.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Isaac Bell House</span> Historic house in Rhode Island, United States

The Isaac Bell House is a historic house and National Historic Landmark at 70 Perry Street in Newport, Rhode Island. Also known as Edna Villa, it is one of the outstanding examples of Shingle Style architecture in the United States. It was designed by McKim, Mead, and White, and built during the Gilded Age, when Newport was the summer resort of choice for some of America's wealthiest families.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Redwood Library and Athenaeum</span> Subscription library in Newport, Rhode Island, United States

The Redwood Library and Athenaeum is a subscription library, museum, rare book repository and research center founded in 1747, and located at 50 Bellevue Avenue in Newport, Rhode Island. The building, designed by Peter Harrison and completed in March 1750, was the first purposely built library in the United States, and the oldest neo-Classical building in the country. It has been in continuous use since its opening.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Governor Henry Lippitt House</span> Historic house in Rhode Island, United States

The Governor Henry Lippitt House is a historic house museum at 199 Hope Street on the East Side of Providence, Rhode Island. A National Historic Landmark, it is one of the finest Italianate mansion houses in the state, and considered one of the best-preserved examples of Victorian-era houses in the United States. It is notable for its association with Henry Lippitt (1818–91), a wealthy textile magnate who was the 33rd Governor of Rhode Island. The house is owned by Preserve Rhode Island, and is open to the public for tours seasonally or by appointment.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Kingscote (mansion)</span> Historic house in Rhode Island, United States

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. It was one of the first summer "cottages" constructed in Newport, and 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.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Museum of Newport History</span> United States historic place

The Museum of Newport History is a history museum in the Old Brick Market building in the heart of Newport, Rhode Island, United States. It is owned and operated by the Newport Historical Society at 127 Thames Street on Washington Square. The building, designed by noted 18th-century American architect Peter Harrison and built in the 1760s, is a National Historic Landmark.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Bellevue Avenue Historic District</span> United States historic place in Newport, Rhode Island

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.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Shingle style architecture</span> American architectural style

The shingle style is an American architectural style made popular by the rise of the New England school of architecture, which eschewed the highly ornamented patterns of the Eastlake style in Queen Anne architecture. In the shingle style, English influence was combined with the renewed interest in Colonial American architecture which followed the 1876 celebration of the Centennial. The plain, shingled surfaces of colonial buildings were adopted, and their massing emulated.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Newport Historic District (Rhode Island)</span> Historic district in Rhode Island, United States

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.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ocean Drive Historic District</span> Historic district in Rhode Island, United States

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.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Newport Art Museum</span>

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Charles H. Baldwin House</span> Historic house

Charles H. Baldwin House is a historic house on Bellevue Avenue in Newport, Rhode Island, United States, that is part of the Bellevue Avenue Historic District, but is individually listed on the National Register of Historic Places (NRHP).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Greenvale Farm</span> Historic house in Rhode Island, United States

Greenvale Farm is an historic farm and 19th-century summer estate at 582 Wapping Road in Portsmouth, Rhode Island. Historically used for farmland, a portion of this 53-acre (21 ha) was transformed into an expansive country estate in the 1860s by John Barstow, a Boston merchant. It is located at the end of a narrow dirt lane, and is set overlooking the Sakonnet River. The main house, designed by John Hubbard Sturgis and built in 1864–65, is an exuberant implementation of the Stick style with Gothic features. It has asymmetric form, with a variety of projections, dormers, gables, and cross-gables, with a variety of exterior finishes. The estate continues to be owned by Barstow descendants.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Kay Street–Catherine Street–Old Beach Road Historic District</span> Historic district in Rhode Island, United States

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.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Louis Kotzow House</span> Historic house in Rhode Island, United States

The Louis Kotzow House is a historic house in Pawtucket, Rhode Island. It is a 1+12-story wood-frame structure, laid out in an L shape. Its exterior is visually busy, with numerous projecting dormer and gable sections, and elaborate woodwork, including bracketed eaves and applied Stick style woodwork on a projecting bay section. Its porch has a delicate jigsawn railing, with a wooden frieze and decorative arches above. The house, built c. 1875, is one of two built by the German Land Cooperative Association, which sought to create a German-speaking enclave in the area.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">John Hastings Cottage</span> Historic house in Massachusetts, United States

The John Hastings Cottage is an historic house at 31 William Street in Worcester, Massachusetts. Built about 1880, it is a distinctive example of Victorian Gothic architecture. The house was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1980, where it is misspelled as "Hastins".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Bellevue Avenue/Casino Historic District</span> Historic district in Rhode Island, United States

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.

John Noble Alsop Griswold was an American China trade merchant, industrialist, and diplomat.

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 Leslie Donovan and Carolyn Pitts (January 31, 2000). "National Historic Landmark Nomination: John N. A. Griswold House / Newport Art Museum and Art Association" (pdf). National Park Service.{{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help) and Accompanying 10 photos, exterior and interior, from 1969, 1999, and undated  (32 KB)
  2. 1 2 "National Register Information System". National Register of Historic Places . National Park Service. January 23, 2007.
  3. 1 2 "John N. A. Griswold House". National Historic Landmark summary listing. National Park Service. Archived from the original on June 6, 2011. Retrieved May 12, 2008.