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Newport Mansions - Overview, Breakers
Newport Mansions - The Elm, Issac Bell House, Kingscote Newport Mansions - Marble House, Rosecliff Newport Mansions - Chataeu Sur Mer, Chepstow, other mansions Visiting Rough Point Visiting Belcourt |
Cruise destination:
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The Elms
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The Elms
The Elms is another extraordinary mansion and another National Historic Landmark.
Edward Julius Berwind made a fortune in the Pennsylvania coal industry and became one of the most influential Americans of his day with friends like Theodore Roosevelt and Kaiser Wilhem II of Germany. Like the rest of the Gilded Age society, his family spent the summers in Newport. By 1898, the summer house that the Berwinds had been using was no longer commensurate with their status. So Berwind commissioned architect Horace Trumbauer to design a Newport cottage for him. Trumbauer's inspiration was the Chateau d'Asnieres in France. However, while the building resembled an 18th cenury French nobleman's residence both inside and out, it also incorporated all of the latest technology. Thus, it was not |
just visually impressive but was considered by contemporaries as remarkable for the magical way it seemed to operate - - albeit with 40 servants.
Today, The Elms is still grand. Its clean classical lines, embellished with the occasional statue, speak of confidence. Inside, the grand staircase, the ballroom and other double height rooms combined with the Venetian paintings, tapestries and Chinese lacquer panels underscore the grandeur. It is almost inconceivable that all this belonged not to some heriditary duke but rather to someone who rose up from a middle-class German imigrant family. The front entrance to the Elms is set not far from Bellevue Avenue. But in the back, the house overlooks a sweeping, well-manicured lawn. Follow the paths that surround it and you will see elaborate out-buildings, statues, fountains and a beautiful sunken garden, which has been recently restored by the Preservation Society. |
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The Issac Bell House
By comparison, a much more modest structure but a mansion nonetheless, the Issac Bell House is also a National Historic Landmark.
Bell was a successful cotton broker and investor. His brother-in-law was James Gordon Bennett Jr., publisher of the New York Herald. In 1883, Bell commissioned the prestigous New York architectural firm McKim, Mead and White to design a summer cottage for him in Newport. |
The result was a wooden structure that is considered one of the best examples of Shingle Style architecture in the United States. This style is so named because of the use of unpianted wooden shingles on the exterior of the house. The house is also considered noteworthy because of its incorporation of elements of Asian architecture into the design such as bambo columns on the porch.
After it left the Bell family's possession, the house went through a number of owners and was at various times split into apartments and used as a nursing home. It was purchased by the Preservation Society in 1994 is in the process of being restored. However, it is open to the public “as a work in progress.” 
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Kingscote
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One of the first Newport Cottages, Kingscote is the first mansion open to the public that you come to if you are approaching the Bellevue Historic District from Newport's shopping district.
The house was begun in 1839 by George Noble Jones, a southern plantation owner, who came to Newport each year to avoid the heat back home. His architect was Richard Upjohn who produced a Gothic Revival style house. With the outbreak of the Civil War, the Jones family left Newport never to return. In 1864, it was purchased by William Henry King, who had made his fortune in the China trade. He passed it on to his son David in 1878 and a few years later, David commissioned McKim, Mead and White to expand the house including a new dining room, which again combined Eastern and Western |
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Marble House and Rosecliff are next
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Cruise destination - - Newport, Rhode Island - Attractions and Places of Interest - - Mansions - page 2