Middletown is a town in Newport County, Rhode Island, United States. The population was 17,075 at the 2020 census. It lies to the south of Portsmouth and to the north of Newport on Aquidneck Island, hence the name "Middletown."
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.
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.
Malbone is one of the oldest mansions in Newport, Rhode Island. The original mid-18th century estate was the country residence of Col. Godfrey Malbone of Virginia and Connecticut. The main house burned down during a dinner party in 1766 and the remaining structure sat dormant for many years until New York lawyer Jonathan Prescott Hall built a new roughly 5,800 sq ft (540 m2) castellated residence directly on top of the old ivy-covered ruins.
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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 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 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.
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).
The Clambake Club of Newport is a historic private club at 353 Tuckerman Avenue in Middletown, Rhode Island.
The Lyman C. Josephs House, also known as Louisiana, is a historic home at 438 Wolcott Avenue in Middletown, Rhode Island. Architect Clarence Luce designed the house, which was built in 1882, and is a well-preserved early example of the Shingle style. The house received architectural notice not long after its construction, but is more noted for its relatively modest size and lack of ostentation than the summer houses of nearby Newport. It was built for the Josephs family of Baltimore, Maryland.
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.
The Harbor Lane–Eden Street Historic District encompasses a neighborhood of Bar Harbor, Maine, consisting of architect-designed summer estates that served as the summer of elite society families of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Located northwest of the main village and fronting on Frenchman Bay, the district includes nine summer houses that survived a devastating 1947 fire which destroyed many other summer estates. The district was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2009.
The Alexander Van Rensselaer House, also known historically as Restmere and Villalou, is a historic house at 1 Ichabod Lane in Middletown, Rhode Island. Built in 1857, it is a prominent example of Italianate architecture, designed by Richard Upjohn, with some of the earliest examples of Stick style decoration in the United States. It was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2018.
