On the Road is a weekday feature spotlighting reader photo submissions.
From the exotic to the familiar, whether you’re traveling or in your own backyard, we would love to see the world through your eyes.
This is our last holiday submission, which I hope will be remedied before tomorrow morning!
We started to visit Newport during the Christmas season a few years before the pandemic. Since then, it has become a bit of a seasonal tradition for us, at least for now. It is only a few hours drive from our home in the Boston area. The organization that maintains the mansions there goes all out to decorate them during the season. Visiting is a great way to get into (or stay in) the holiday spirit!
This is the “Gothic Room” of the Marble House decorated for Christmas. The Marble House is one of multiple “summer cottages” in Newport belonging to Vanderbilt family members.
The marble floors of the Marble House certainly are attractive, as is the rest of the mansion.
This is the ballroom at the Elms. Of course, having a good-sized ballroom for dancing was a prerequisite in order to properly throw a party for entertaining your fellow Gilded Age glitterati.
Interestingly, the original owner of this mansion made his fortune selling coal to the US Navy. Government contracts have always been lucrative it seems.
The Grand staircase of the Elms decorated for the holidays.
The heart shaped staircase at Rosecliff can’t be beat for a dramatic entrance to a ball. Rosecliff has the biggest ballroom of the mansions and hosted many parties.
During our visit this time, there was a special exhibit of beautiful Tiffany glass pieces that we especially enjoyed.
To my eye, Rosecliff is the most attractive of the mansions that can be visited.
The Breakers (built by the Vanderbilt family) is the biggest and most ostentatious of the mansions (and probably the most well-known). Definitely imposing and has wonderful views of the ocean from the lawn, but not particularly aesthetically pleasing in my opinion.
All of the mansions have great audio guides and displays to inform about the history of the mansions, Newport and the Gilded Age generally. It is amazing to read about the amount of staff that were needed to keep up the “cottages” or to host one of the lavish parties.
One interesting tidbit is that the introduction of the Federal Income Tax was a major factor leading to the end of the Gilded Age and its great wealth disparity. A cautionary tale for today’s billionaires as we live through our own Gilded Age?
One of many Christmas trees on display at the Breakers.
While the mansions are great to visit, my favorite part of visiting Newport is the Cliff Walk. On one side are dramatic water views and on the other are the different oceanfront mansions with their green lawns leading to the edge of the bluff. This is the view south from the “40 steps” where you can descend the bluff down to near the water level. Bonus couple of eiders in this shot!
If the lighting is good, I bring my nice camera with me on the Cliff Walk as there are usually lots of ducks, grebes, loons and other sea birds to be seen near the shore. Here is a bufflehead drake in full sun and iridescence; harlequin ducks and eiders are also common to see.
We usually also drive over to nearby Sachuest Point NWR on our visits. The refuge is another great spot to see these ducks as well as scoters, gannets and other wintering birds. One can take in the history and scenic views and get in some good birdwatching in the same trip!
Rachel Bakes
My daughter goes to college at salve Regina, right next to the Breakers. She got a tour of Breakers in its holiday finery and drooled. She also volunteered at a performance of The Nutcracker dances throughout Rosecliff. Can only imagine how stunning that was.
eclare
I can’t begin to comprehend how gorgeous these mansions are in person. That heart shaped staircase is exquisite.
Jeffg166
Today the lasagna gets put together and baked. Chilled over night it will cut better tomorrow when reheated.
West of the Rockies
Lovely photographs of stunning places! I toured the Astor mansion in the very early 90’s. So glad for the experience…
TBone
Reminds me of the Winterthur mansion and grounds, the museum goes all out every Christmas. Thanks for these lovely pics!
Winter Wren
@Rachel Bakes: Ochre Court is certainly a beautiful building on that campus which we’ve only viewed from the Cliff Walk. That sounds amazing to see Nutcracker dances at Rosecliff – we’ll have to watch out for that possibility when scheduling a future visit! I considered to include a photo of the stunning ballroom at Rosecliff, but that room wasn’t decorated for the holidays when we visited.
J.
I visited Newport and the cottages years ago, when it was warm out. Will have to go at Christmastime next time. Thanks for sharing!
raven
I didn’t know much about Newport when I went to Providence for a reunion of my unit in Vietnam. I had a fishing trip scheduled out of Narragansett but it got rained out. I decided to just go for a drive and ended up in Newport. I called my wife and said “there are a hundred Downton Abbey’s here”! Here’s one of them!
Argiope
Who funds these stately homes nowadays? Are these privately owned? Are they essentially event centers? I’ve sometimes thought the best use for places like these would be that random Americans get to stay in them for a week by lottery–democratize them a little bit. Of course, someone would mess that up in about 3 weeks (Florida Man brings 4-foot alligator to the Biltmore, film at 11) and they’d have to shut the whole thing down again.
Rachel Bakes
@Winter Wren: she likened a dinner at Ochre Court to eating in Versailles. The Nutcracker was the first week in December I think? Thanks for the lovely pictures. I’ve never seen the mansions at Christmas
JPL
Decades ago, while visiting the Breakers with my now ex, I mentioned that our house would fit in the kitchen. That’s how massive it is.
brendancalling
I grew up swimming and jumping off th cliffs behind those places. Rose cliff often hosted our high school prom. The best was cliff jumping behind Doris Duke’s place. Sometimes on the walk down, you’d see Senator Claiborne Pell, who lived just past the “Dark Shadows” mansion.
WaterGirl
@JPL:
Perfectly conveys the size, thank you!
Winter Wren
@Argiope: A few are still privately owned, but most of the largest mansions are maintained by the non-profit Newport Mansions Preservation Society. I presume mostly the maintenance is funded by membership dues, admission fees and occasional private function rentals.
WaterGirl
@Winter Wren: I would never have known this ever existed. thanks for these!
Winter Wren
@brendancalling: That is so cool!
Trivia Man
Thank you, an amazing place to visit and id love to go back again. I was very surprised at my own reaction to the Breakers. I was expecting nothing but disgust at the ostentatious consumption but i had the realization that it actually served as a public building.
”Public” in the broadest sense but definitely serving that purpose. We don’t begrudge large, ornate buildings that host large gatherings and keep society running. Supreme Court building, US Capitol and so forth. At that time in the USA this place served the public. I contend in a selfish, exclusive, harmful, exclusionary way – but this is where business got done.
Contracts, decisions on future direction of legislation, social introductions for maintaining and forming alliances. An agora for mingling IF you could gain entry. The others were interesting in their own right, Im a sucker for ild houses and craftsmanship, but the enormity of The Breakers seemed oddly functional.
brendancalling
@Winter Wren: it was weird growing up around the wealthy. I could write a book about growing up in Newport in the 1970s and 1980s. It would not be the idyl you’d expect.
Back then, you still had a big middle class. Now, no one can afford to buy a house or start a family. It’s become an amusement park for the rich (again). Some billionaire bought up tons of property recently, and is busily making everyone miserable.
brendancalling
@Winter Wren: I used to work in the cafeteria at Salve as a stoned high school senior. Lots of stories about THAT too!
Trivia Man
@Winter Wren: With today’s new gilded class, I bet they could charge dearly for parties. What a demonstration of your status! If they make it exclusive enough, they might be able to fund everything that way.
You get the Breakers for your party and unique photo ops for the low low price of $50? $100 million. Plus OUR security and surveillance. That is a drop in the bucket for the MOTU.
That funds a lot of plumbing upkeep.
Elizabelle
We lived in Newport RI in the late 1960s, and it was (and still is) a magical place to be. The big 3 then were the Breakers, Marble House, and the Elms.
Had not heard of Rosecliff — thank you. I see it was in private hands until 1971, when it was donated to the Preservation Society of Newport County.
All these photos are beautiful; thank you, Winter Wren. Cliff Walk is fabulous, if you never enter one of the “summer cottages.”
And: all of these mansions are less ostentatious than the Biltmore in NC. That place is just too much, although well worth a visit. (Also for the grounds.) Built by George Washington Vanderbilt. All that money, and still succumbed at age 51 to a blood clot following an appendectomy.
Biltmore has a great upstairs downstairs tour. And there is [an empty] swimming pool in the basement; that’s always cool. Made of what we would call white subway tile, with wood accessories.
Do you know if the Newport mansions do tours of their kitchens and servants’ areas? Time to get back and visit Newport again.
Merry Christmas Eve.
Winter Wren
@Elizabelle: Yes, you can definitely see most of the servants quarters in at least the Breakers and the Elms. I recall the Elms had quite an impressive climb for the servant’s stairwell. The Breakers does a daily “Beneath the Breakers” tour that covers this topic as well as the evolving technology including the introduction of electricity and elevators. We are visiting again this coming Friday, so may try it out. But the self-guided tours these days are already really good!
SkyBluePink
What fun it would be to decorate these beautiful places.
Lovely pictures.
Elizabelle
@Winter Wren: Excellent. Enjoy.
Is the Newport Creamery (ice cream) still in existence? Loved that place!