Newport, Rhode Island, United States
Newport
must be one of the most beautiful cities in the US. It is not too large (about
25,000) and surrounded by bays and inlets. Most of the streets are tree-lined
with beautiful timber houses going back to the 1800’s. It is also famous for
the mansions that were built at the turn of the 20th century by the
super-rich of the time and was the home of the America’s Cup yachting races
from 1930 until taken by Australia in 1983. You get the feeling that having
held the Cup for so many years, Newport residents still believes it should be
there and that this is its spiritual home.
The
holder of the Cup for 132 years from 1851 until 1983 was the New York Yacht
Club and, and interestingly, just after the loss of the Cup, in 1988, they
bought a magnificent club in a 1906 mansion on the shores of Newport Harbour. Members
for clubs with reciprocal rights can stay there, as a friend of ours from the
Royal Perth Yacht Club in Western Australia did recently (Royal Perth YC just
happens to be the club that won the Cup in 1983).
Since the loss of the Cup the
NYYC has reinvented itself and become involved in team racing, youth sailing,
and international regattas.
The
main activities in Newport are around the harbour area and Thames Street where
there are restaurants, boutiques, galleries, yachts and boats doing day trips. A
lot of the buildings are on the wharves stretching into the harbour. Washington
Square is the historical centre of Newport and where George Washington met a
number of times, with the French commander, le Comte de Rochambeau, to plan
defeating the British. This led to the victory at Yorktown, Virginia that
assured American independence.
The
other important area is the Bellevue Avenue Historic Area which is where the
super-rich built there summer vacation houses – try mansions. Even the private
homes in this area are amazing. The International tennis Hall of Fame is also
on Bellevue Avenue, in an 1880 structure, which now includes a museum as well
as a number of different types of courts.
On
our previous visit to Newport, we visited Rosemount, the mansion featured in
the original version of The Great Gatsby so this time we toured The Breaker and
The Elms.
The Breakers is the most lavish of all the mansions built in The
Gilded Age (a satirical term used by Mark Twain to describe the money being
spent) and was completed in 1895. It was built for Cornelius Vanderbilt and was
one of the first houses in the US to have fire-proofing as one of its key
elements. The house has 70 rooms many of which feature furnishings and
decorations bought in Europe. Incredibly, these mansions were used no more than
2 months per year by their owners, the rest of the time being closed.
The
Elms is a somewhat smaller “summer cottage” with only about 40 rooms. It was
built for a coal mine magnate in 1901 for a cost of $ 1.5 million (about $40
million in 2017 money). It is a little more sedate but also features European
paintings, furniture and sculptures. In keeping with the French architecture of
the house, the grounds of The Elms, were designed in French eighteenth-century
taste and include a sunken garden and a large coach-house and stables.
In
their prime, the owners of these mansions spent vast amounts of money outdoing
each other with their parties.
Apart from the food prepared by French chefs,
there were flowers imported from exotic locations as well as animals such as
monkeys and camels on show.
Vernon
Court, one of the mansions on Bellevue Avenue, houses the Museum of American
Illustrators. This is a private museum owned by an architect and his wife and
has over 2,000 original works of noted American illustrators including Norman
Rockwell, Maxfield Parrish, J. C. Leyendecker and N.C. Wyeth. Many of the works
on display were use as covers for major publications such as The Post, Time
Magazine, Harper’s Bazaar and others.
We
are fortunate to be able to visit these mansions at all because in the 1950s
and 60s, it looked as though most of them were going to be demolished to make
way for developments. One way to see many of them is by doing the “Cliff Walk”,
a 5 km walk along the shoreline and past the front of the houses.
2022-05-20