Newport Rhode Island Inn Mansion Tours and Packages
 By
far the most popular attraction in Newport are the Newport mansions.
Built near the turn of the century, these magnificent structures are
each a museum onto itself.
Astor’s Beachwood
- Bellevue Avenue. The former home of the Queen of
American Society, Caroline Astor. Known as The Mrs. Astor, she was
the creator of the first American social register, "The 400," and
the mother of John Jacob Astor IV, who died on the RMS Titanic.
Today, the mansion is home to a Victorian Living History Museum.
Beachwood offers Newport's only Living History tour guided by
members of the Beachwood Theatre Company who recreate the lifestyle
of Newport's vivid Victorian past.
• May - December: 10am - 4pm daily - $15 per person; allow 45
minutes for tour.
• November - April: Times and tours vary.
- Ruggles Avenue - The grand 70 room Italian
Renaissance-style villa built by Cornelius Vanderbilt II, President
and Chairman of the New York Central Railroad, after his first house
burned down. The most elegant and opulent, by far, of all the
Newport mansions.
• Opens at 9 am, last tour admission at 5 pm, house and grounds
close at 6 PM; $15 per person.
- Bellevue Avenue - Chateau-sur-Mer is a landmark of High Victorian
architecture, furniture, wallpapers, ceramics and stenciling. It was
the most palatial residence in Newport from its completion in 1852
until the appearance of the Vanderbilt houses in the 1890s.
Chateau-sur-Mer was the scene of memorable entertainment, from the
"Fete Champetre", an elaborate country picnic for over two thousand
guests held in 1857, to the debutante ball for Miss Edith Wetmore in
1889. Chateau-su-Mer's grand scale and lavish parties ushered in the
Gilded Age of Newport.
Schedule and ticket information
- Narragansett Avenue (reservations required) - An
Italianate-style villa, Chepstow was built in 1860 by resident
Newport architect George Champlin Mason as the summer residence of
Edmund Schermerhorn. Acquired by Mrs. Emily Morris Gallatin in 1911,
the estate continued in the Morris family until bequeathed in 1986
to the Preservation Society with its collections intact and an
endowment by Mrs. Alletta Morris McBean. Containing the original
Morris-Gallatin furnishings together with important 19th century
American paintings and documents from other former Morris family
residences, Chepstow is highly evocative of the taste and
collections of a descendant of one of America's founding families,
placed in the context of a contemporary Newport summer home.
Schedule and ticket information
- Bellevue Avenue - The Elms was the summer
residence of Mr. and Mrs. Edward Julius Berwind of Philadelphia and
New York. Mr. Berwind made his fortune in the Pennsylvania coal
industry. In 1898, the Berwinds engaged Philadelphia architect
Horace Trumbauer to design a house modeled after the mid-18th
century French chateau d'Asnieres (c.1750) outside Paris.
Construction of The Elms was completed in 1901 at a cost reported at
approximately $1.4 million. The interiors and furnishings were
designed by Allard and Sons of Paris and were the setting for the
Berwinds' collection of Renaissance ceramics, 18th century French
and Venetian paintings, and Oriental jades. The elaborate Classical
Revival gardens on the grounds were developed between 1907 and 1914.
Schedule and ticket information
- Cory's Lane, Portsmouth - This small country
estate was purchased in 1872 by Thomas E. Brayton (1844-1939),
Treasurer of the Union Cotton Manufacturing Company in Fall River,
Massachusetts. It consisted of seven acres of land, a white
clapboard summer residence, farm outbuildings, a pasture and a
vegetable garden. There are 80 pieces of topiary throughout the
gardens, including 21 animals and birds in addition to geometric
figures and ornamental designs, sculpted from California privet,
yew, and English boxwood. Green Animals is the oldest and most
northern topiary garden in the United States.
Schedule and ticket information
- Washington Street (Point Section) - Hunter House
is one of the finest examples of Georgian Colonial architecture from
Newport's "golden age" in the mid-18th century. The house was built
and decorated when Newport was a cosmopolitan city with a principle
of religious tolerance that attracted Quakers, Baptists,
Congregationalists and Sephardic Jews. The great mercantile families
lived patrician lives, building harbor front mansions overlooking
their trading ships, and entertained in grand style. They bought
furniture and silver from local craftsmen and were the patrons of
such important early painters as Robert Feke and Gilbert Stuart.
Schedule and ticket information
- Bellevue Avenue - The Isaac Bell House is one of
the best surviving examples of shingle style architecture in the
country. The house was designed by the firm of McKim, Mead and White
in 1883 for Isaac Bell, a wealthy cotton broker and investor. It is
a combination of Old English and European architecture with colonial
American and exotic details, such as a Japanese-inspired open floor
plan and bamboo-style porch columns.
Schedule and ticket information
- Bellevue Avenue - A landmark of the Gothic Revival style in
American architecture. Its appearance in Newport marked the
beginning of the "cottage boom" that would distinguish the town as a
veritable laboratory for the design o picturesque houses throughout
the 19th century. In 1839 Southern planter George Noble Jones
commissioned architect Richard Upjohn to design a summer cottage
along a country road, known as Bellevue Avenue, on the outskirts of
town.
Schedule and ticket information
- Bellevue Avenue - Marble House was built between
1888 and 1892 for Mr. and Mrs. William K. Vanderbilt. It was
designed as a summerhouse, or "cottage", as Newporters called them
in remembrance of the modest houses of the early 19th century. But
Marble House was much more than a cottage; it was a social and
architectural landmark that set the pace for Newport's subsequent
transformation from a quiet summer colony of wooden houses to the
legendary resort of opulent stone palaces. Alva E. Smith was
educated in France and married the second son of William H.
Vanderbilt and had three children before she divorced Vanderbilt to
marry Oliver Belmont in 1895.
Schedule and ticket information
- Bellevue Avenue - Commissioned by Nevada silver
heiress Theresa Fair Oelrichs in 1889, architect Stanford White
modeled Rosecliff after the Grand Trianon, the garden retreat of
French kings at Versailles. After the house was completed in 1902,
at a reported cost of $2.5 million, Mrs. Oelrichs hosted fabulous
parties. Scenes from several films have been shot on location at
Rosecliff, including High Society, The Great Gatsby, True Lies and
Amistad.
Schedule and ticket information
- At the end of famed Bellevue Avenue, past some of
the grandest homes in the country, the mansion called Rough Point
sits behind trimmed trees and shrubs. For years, Doris Duke, the
tobacco heiress dubbed "The Richest Girl in the World," let few
strangers glimpse the oceanside home she inherited from her parents.
•Tickets must be purchased at the Visitor's Center, America's Cup
Avenue
•4 tours daily - $25 per person. - Tuesday through Saturday, 9:45,
11:30, 1:30, 3:30 |
