NEWPORT

Back in 2014 and 16 saw me in Newport,  Rhode Island. For me and most East Coasters, it's a fast and easy get away, one which I highly recommend. A great option right now considering the pandemic restriction of traveling aboard. Newport is so beautiful and a very chic town. The views are great off the coast, there is sailing, and if you love architecture, past times and mansions...then you'll love this town. My favorite was the  Marble House,  a Gilded Age mansion. Designed as a summer cottage for  William Vanderbilt, grandson of Cornelius Vanderbilt, who gave it to his wife, Alva Vanderbilt for her 39th birthday. (I reeeeeallly need a rich man). The society architect Richard Morris Hunt,  was it's creator. It was unparalleled in opulence for an American house when it was completed in 1892. It's construction began in 1888. It is a Gilded mansion that has 50 rooms. If for sale today,  it would cost someone around $660 million for the house and land. What blew my mind in many of the  houses, was the level of detail and craftmanship. The house features more that just the white marble accents, which haven given it  it's name. There are marble sculptures that add a lot of interest to the house. The architecture and paintings on the ceiling were all hand painted. The designer included plenty of marble in the home in a variety of spaces. Yellow Siena was used inside the mansion in many places. It also features pink Numidian marble in the dinning room, which was very opulent. Alva had Parisian decorator, Jules Allard do the walls in the Numidian marble, and the rest of the room French style. The dinning chairs the family sat upon were of solid bronze, and then covered in gold leaf, and each weighed 75lbs. It took a footman to move them. The house featured a really cool kitchen, which we don't get to see often....that I suspect Ms Patmore would have loved. The home also featured other styles like Gothic Revival and Rococo design, which I'm fond of. Alva also had a Chinese Tea House built by the seaside, to par take of afternoon tea.

It's almost a shame we don't see good quality craftsmanship anymore. I suppose there are a few craftsmen who still have a very good skill set and take pride in their craft.

SUMMER COTTAGE ANYONE?

Opulence is a word easily applied to the grandest of Newport Rhode Island’s summer “cottages". Yes I said cottages, as that's what they are referred to in Newport,  and back in the Gilded Age. It was nice to see all of the mansions of Newport. The luxury, the opulence, the wealth, was very, very impressive. I would love to see the year round house!!!!! I would highly recommend this trip if your a lover of homes and interior design. The tour we took was only 39.95 to tour 5 mansions and the Breakers was separate. Between the house tours and Cliff Walk I got plenty of walking in!!!! In this post I'll share the first two of my jaw dropping favorites.

Probably the most famous, and my favorite of the houses on the  Newport mansion tour is the Breakers.

 

 

I literately felt about two inches tall next to these gates!!!!

 The grandest of Newport cottages, the home was constructed between 1893 and 1895 at a cost of more than $7 million. The Breakers was built as the Newport summer home of Cornelius Vanderbilt II.  The five-story 70-room mansion boasts approximately 65,000 sq ft. of living space. The Ochre Point Avenue entrance is marked by sculpted iron gates and 30-foot high walkway gates are part of a 12-foot-high limestone and iron fence that borders the property on all but the Atlantic Ocean side. In 1948 Countess Gladys Széchenyi  (the youngest daughter of Cornelius Vanderbilt II), sold the high-maintenance Breakers to the non-profit Preservation Society of Newport County in 1972 for $365,000. I was interested to learn that, the family  continues to live on the third floor, which is not open to the public. They summer there to this day, hidden from the hundreds of thousands of tourists who explore below. Hot damn, there is hope yet I'll end up with Anderson!!!!!! Some of my favorite rooms.....

 

Morning tea anyone????

The second house we went to see the second day was the Marble House. It may look smaller in these pictures, but I assure you when standing in front of it, it was indeed huge!!!! The front pillars were like the great giant titans in Greek mythology. The Marble House was built between 1888 and 1892 for William Kissam Vanderbilt, grandson of Commodore Cornelius Vanderbilt. 

 It was reported to cost $11 million ($260,000,000 in today’s dollars) of which $7 million was spent on 500,000 cubic feet of marble. Upon its completion, Mr. Vanderbilt gave the house to his wife Alva Erskine Smith as her 39th birthday present. William’s older brother Cornelius Vanderbilt II subsequently built the grandest of Newport cottages, The Breakers, between 1893 and 1895.The Vanderbilts divorced in 1895 and Alva married Oliver H.P. Belmont, moving down the street to Belcourt. After his death, she reopened Marble House, and had a Chinese Tea House built on the seaside cliffs, where she hosted rallies for women's right to vote. She sold the house to Frederick H. Prince in 1932. The Preservation Society acquired the house in 1963 from the Prince estate.  In 2006, Marble House was designated a National Historic Landmark

 

 

So aren't they just cute little ole summer cottages? It would take my houseboys and then some to run these year round!! But I could live with that!!