The Breakers is a Gilded Age mansion located at 44 Ochre Point Avenue, Newport, Rhode Island, US.
It was built between 1893 and 1895 as a summer residence for Cornelius Vanderbilt II, a member of the wealthy Vanderbilt family.
The Breakers | |
Location | 44 Ochre Point Avenue, Newport, Rhode Island |
---|---|
Coordinates | 41°28′11″N 71°17′55″W / 41.46972°N 71.29861°W |
Built | 1895 |
Architect | Richard Morris Hunt |
Architectural style | Neo Italian Renaissance |
Part of | Bellevue Avenue Historic District (ID72000023) |
NRHP reference No. | 71000019 |
Significant dates | |
Added to NRHP | September 10, 1971 |
Designated NHL | October 12, 1994 |
Designated NHLDCP | December 8, 1972 |
The 70-room mansion, with a gross area of 138,300 square feet (12,850 m2) and 62,482 square feet (5,804.8 m2) of living area on five floors, was designed by Richard Morris Hunt in the Renaissance Revival style; the interior decor was by Jules Allard and Sons and Ogden Codman Jr.
The Ochre Point Avenue entrance is marked by sculpted iron gates, and the 30-foot-high (9.1 m) walkway gates are part of a 12-foot-high (3.7 m) limestone-and-iron fence that borders the property on all but the ocean side. The footprint of the house covers approximately 1 acre (4,000 m2) or 43,000 square feet of the 14 acres (5.7 ha) estate on the cliffs overlooking Easton Bay of the Atlantic Ocean.
The house was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1971, and was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1994. It is also a contributing property to the Bellevue Avenue Historic District. The property is owned and operated by the Newport Preservation Society as a museum and is open for visits all year.
Cornelius Vanderbilt II purchased the grounds in 1885 for $450,000 ($15.3 million today). The previous mansion on the property was owned by Pierre Lorillard IV; it burned on November 25, 1892, and Vanderbilt commissioned famed architect Richard Morris Hunt to rebuild it in splendor. Vanderbilt insisted that the building be made as fireproof as possible, resulting in a structure composed of masonry and steel trusses, with no wooden parts. He even required that the boiler be located away from the house in an underground space below the front lawn.
The designers created an interior using marble imported from Italy and Africa, and rare woods and mosaics from countries around the world. It also included architectural elements purchased from chateaux in France, such as the library mantel. Expansion was finally finished in 1892.
The Breakers is the architectural and social archetype of the "Gilded Age", a period when members of the Vanderbilt family were among the major industrialists of America. It was the largest, most opulent house in the Newport area upon its completion in 1895.
Vanderbilt died from a cerebral hemorrhage caused by a stroke in 1899 at age 55, leaving The Breakers to his wife Alice Gwynne Vanderbilt. She outlived him by 35 years and died at the age of 89 in 1934. She left The Breakers to her youngest daughter Countess Gladys Széchenyi (1886–1965), essentially because Gladys lacked American property; in addition, none of her other children were interested in the property, while Gladys had always loved the estate.[citation needed]
In 1948, Gladys leased the high-maintenance property to The Preservation Society of Newport County for $1 per year. The Preservation Society bought The Breakers and approximately 90% of its furnishings in 1972 for $365,000 ($2.7 million today) from Countess Sylvia Szapary, Gladys's daughter, although the agreement granted her life tenancy. Upon her death in 1998, The Preservation Society agreed to allow the family to continue to live on the third floor, which is not open to the public. This occupancy ended in 2018.
It is now the most-visited attraction in Rhode Island, with approximately 450,000 visitors annually as of 2017.
The pea-gravel driveway is lined with maturing pin oaks and red maples. The trees of The Breakers' grounds act as screens that increase the sense of distance between The Breakers and its Newport neighbors. Among the more unusual imported trees are two examples of the Blue Atlas Cedar, a native of North Africa. Clipped hedges of Japanese yew and Pfitzer juniper line the tree-shaded footpaths that meander about the grounds. Informal plantings of arbor vitae, taxus, Chinese juniper, and dwarf hemlock provide attractive foregrounds for the walls that enclose the formally landscaped terrace.
The grounds also contain several varieties of other rare trees, copper and weeping beeches. Today’s pattern for the south parterre garden was determined from old photographs and laid out in pink and white alyssum and blue ageratum. The wide borders paralleling the wrought iron fence are planted with rhododendrons, mountain laurel, dogwoods, and many other flowering shrubs that effectively screen the grounds from street traffic and give visitors a feeling of seclusion.
allowed for her possible seven clothing changes per day, and a pager to administer and delegate family needs to the servants. This room also served as her study and had many bookshelves. Additionally, there are discreetly designed corridors that permitted female servants to maintain the laundry and costume needs of the family in a seemingly invisible fashion.
The third floor contains eight bedrooms and a sitting room decorated in Louis XVI style walnut paneling by Ogden Codman. The north wing of the third-floor quarters were reserved for domestic servants. Using ceilings nearly 18-foot-high (5.5 m), Richard Morris Hunt created two separate third floors to allow a mass aggregation of servant bed chambers. This was because of the configuration of the house, built in Italian Renaissance style, which included a pitched roof. Flat-roofed French classical houses built in the area at the time allowed a concealed wing for staff, whereas the Breakers' design did not permit this feature.
A total of 30 bedrooms are located in the two third-floor staff quarters. Three additional bedrooms for the butler, chef, and visiting valet are located on the mezzanine "entresol" floor, located between the first and second floor just to the rear of the main kitchen.
The attic floor contained more staff quarters, general storage areas, and the innovative cisterns. One smaller cistern supplied hydraulic pressure for the 1895 Otis elevator, still functioning in the house even though the house was wired for electricity in 1933. Two larger cisterns supplied fresh and salt water to the many bathrooms in the house.
Over the grand staircase is a stained glass skylight designed by artist John La Farge. Originally installed in the Vanderbilts' 1 West 57th Street (New York City) townhouse dining room, the skylight was removed in 1894 during an expansion of that house.
The Breakers was designed by Richard Morris Hunt, one of the country's most influential architects. It is regarded as a definitive expression of American Beaux-Arts architecture. Hunt's final project, it is also one of his few surviving works, and is valued for its architectural excellence. The home made Hunt the "dean of American architecture", as he was called by his contemporaries, and helped define the Gilded Era in American history.[citation needed]
The house makes an appearance at the end of the establishing shot of the 1990 American drama Reversal of Fortune, where it stands in as the Newport mansion of Sunny and Claus von Bulow, which was instead the nearby Clarendon Court.
The Music room was used in the HBO series The Gilded age (2022–present), the room was featured on the season 1 finale as the Russels' ballroom when they threw coming out ball for their daughter Gladys.
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