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 an unequaled 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).
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.
Peabody & Stearns was a premier architectural firm in the Eastern United States in the late 19th century and early 20th century. Based in Boston, Massachusetts, the firm consisted of Robert Swain Peabody (1845–1917) and John Goddard Stearns Jr. (1843–1917). The firm worked on in a variety of designs but is closely associated with shingle style.
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."
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.
Ochre Court is a large châteauesque mansion in Newport, Rhode Island, United States. Commissioned by Ogden Goelet, it was built at a cost of $4.5 million in 1892. It is the second largest mansion in Newport after nearby The Breakers. These two mansions, along with Belcourt Castle and Marble House, were designed by architect Richard Morris Hunt. It is owned by Salve Regina University.
Rockhurst was built on Bellevue Avenue at Rough Point Newport, Rhode Island in 1891 for Mrs. H. Mortimer Brooks by Peabody and Stearns. The Châteauesque style exterior featured rounded towers with candlesnuffer roofs flanking a central block with an open arcaded gallery along the second story. It was made of farm stone and wood shingles.
Catharine Lorillard Wolfe was an American philanthropist and art collector. Though she gave large amounts of money to institutions such as Grace Episcopal Church and Union College, her most significant gifts were two bequests to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. She left her large collection of popular contemporary paintings to the museum, together with $200,000.
Seaview Terrace, also known as the Carey Mansion, is a privately owned mansion located in Newport, Rhode Island. It was designed in the Châteauesque style based on the French chateaux of the 16th century, and completed in 1925. It was the last of the great "Summer Cottages" constructed and is the fifth-largest of Newport's mansions, after The Breakers, Ochre Court, Belcourt Castle, and Rough Point. The television show Dark Shadows used its exterior as the fictional Collinwood Mansion. Part of the main house and some of the outbuildings were leased to Salve Regina University until recently.
John Goddard Stearns Jr. was an American architect and cofounder of the prominent Boston based firm Peabody and Stearns.
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.
The John Bliss House is an historic stone ender house on 2 Wilbur Avenue near Bliss Road in Newport, Rhode Island. The late seventeenth century Jacobean house is one of the oldest surviving buildings in Rhode Island.
Vinland was the name given to an area of North America by the Norsemen, about the year 1000 CE.
Chepstow is an Italianate house museum located at 120 Narragansett Avenue in Newport, Rhode Island, built in 1860. It originally served as a summer "cottage", but the Preservation Society of Newport County now owns the property. It was listed in the National Register of Historic Places as part of the Ochre Point-Cliffs Historic District in 1975 and within the Historic District of the City of Newport.
Salve Regina University is a private coeducational Roman Catholic university in Newport, Rhode Island, United States. It was founded in 1934 by the Sisters of Mercy and is accredited by the New England Commission of Higher Education. The university enrolls more than 2,800 undergraduate and graduate students annually.
Fairholme is a Tudor Revival historic mansion in Newport, Rhode Island designed by Frank Furness and built by Furness & Hewitt in 1874–1875 for Fairman Rogers.
Florence Adele Vanderbilt Twombly was an American socialite and heiress. She was a member of the prominent Vanderbilt family. She and her husband Hamilton McKown Twombly built Florham, a gilded age estate in Madison, New Jersey.
Isaiah Townsend Burden was prominent American member of New York Society during the Gilded Age.
Louis Lasher Lorillard was a prominent American clubman.
