Rhode Island

Belcourt, Newport, Rhode Island (2)

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Belcourt, seen from the west side along Ledge Road in Newport, around 1895. Image courtesy of the Library of Congress.

The scene in 2018:

As discussed in more detail in the previous post, Belcourt was completed in 1894 as the summer home of Oliver Hazard Perry Belmont, a banker from the prominent Belmont family of New York. It was the third-largest mansion ever built in Newport, and like many of the others it was designed by noted architect Richard Morris Hunt. However, its design was unusual in that Belmont – a young, divorced man with a penchant for horses – dedicated the entire first floor to storage space for carriages and luxurious stables for his horses.

The first photo was taken within about a year after Belmont moved into the house, but it would soon undergo significant changes to the interior, after his 1896 marriage to the recently-divorced Alva Vanderbilt. She was much more interested in using the house for entertaining people than for stabling horses, so after moving in she converted much of the ground floor into a banquet hall, among other alterations to the house.

Oliver Belmont died in 1908, and in 1916 Alva sold the house to his brother, Perry Belmont. He owned Belcourt for the next 24 years, before selling it for just $1,000 in 1940. The house would go through several more owners in the mid-20th century, before being purchased by the Tinney family in 1956. By this point, the house had suffered from serious neglect, but the Tinneys worked to restore it, and opened part of the house for public tours. It would remain in their family until 2012, when it was sold to Carolyn Rafaelian, the founder of the Alex and Ani jewelry company.

Today, it is not possible to photograph Belcourt from the exact same spot as the 1895 photo, as the previously-vacant land in the foreground is now occupied by houses. However, the 2018 photo shows a very similar angle of the west side of the house, seen from Ledge Road. The photo also shows some of the major restoration work that Rafaelian has done, including the replacement of the deteriorated roof. As a result, the exterior looks as good as it did when the house was completed some 125 years ago, and the only noticeable difference between these two photos is the garage door in the foreground, which was added sometime in the 20th century.

Belcourt, Newport, Rhode Island

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Belcourt, seen from the corner of Lakeview Avenue and Ledge Road in Newport, around 1894-1900. Image courtesy of the Library of Congress.

The scene in 2018:

During the second half of the 19th century, Newport became one of the most desirable resort destinations in the country, and many of the wealthiest families in the country built summer homes here. This particular house, named Belcourt, was owned by Oliver Hazard Perry Belmont, a New York banker and socialite who inherited a significant fortune from his father, the prominent financier August Belmont, Sr. The elder Belmont died in 1890, and the following year the 33-year-old Oliver began construction on this 50,000-square-foot mansion.

The house was designed by noted architect Richard Morris Hunt, who designed many of the Gilded Age homes here in Newport, including The Breakers, Marble House, and Ochre Court. However, Hunt’s design for Belcourt was very different from those of the other houses. Despite its size – it was the third-largest Newport mansion after The Breakers and Ochre Court – it was, in many ways, the antithesis of a typical house here. Belmont disliked the garish houses of the people whom he saw as the nouveau riche, so his house deliberately rejected many features that were customary here in Newport.

One notable example of this is the location of the house. Although its address is on Bellevue Avenue, the main entrances are on these two small side streets, as shown in this scene. It is also on the less-desirable west side of Bellevue Avenue, further away from the ocean, so it does not have a waterfront view. Perhaps its most unusual feature, though, was the ground floor, which originally housed stables for Belmont’s prized horses and storage space for carriages. As a result, the rooms for entertaining guests were all on the second floor. This was the same floor as Belmont’s bedroom, which was seen as another major faux pas within Newport society.

As his house demonstrated, Belmont was not particularly bothered by what others thought of him and his behavior. By the time he moved into this house, he was already divorced after a very short marriage to his first wife, Sara Swan Whiting. However, he caused further controversy in 1896, when he married Alva Vanderbilt, the recently-divorced wife of William K. Vanderbilt. In the divorce, Alva had received the palatial Marble House, located nearby on Bellevue Avenue, and her wedding gift from her new husband was the deed to Belcourt, giving her ownership of two of the largest, most opulent mansions in Newport.

Alva’s arrival here at Belcourt quickly brought changes to the original design. Most significant was the ground floor, where the carriage room was converted into a banquet hall. During this time, she lived here at Belcourt, but she continued to own Marble House, although she only used the $11 million home for its laundry facilities, which were better than the ones at Belcourt. However, Oliver Belmont died of appendicitis in 1908, at the age of 49, and she later moved back to Marble House, eventually selling Belcourt in 1916 to Oliver’s brother Perry Belmont.

Perry owned the property until 1940, but by this point the opulent summer mansions such as Belcourt had fallen out of fashion. Newport was no longer the exclusive resort that it had been at the turn of the century, and these houses were seen as outdated white elephants. As a result, Perry Belmont sold Belcourt for just $1,000, a mere fraction of the $3 million that it had cost his brother to build the house less than 50 years earlier. The new owner, George Waterman, hoped to turn the house into an antique car museum, but he was prevented from doing this by zoning laws. He did, however, perform some restoration work on the house before selling it in 1943.

After changing hands several more times, the house was purchased by the Tinney family in 1956 for $25,000. They performed restoration work, filled the house with antiques, and opened it for public tours, while also maintaining it as a residence. They owned the house until 2012, when it was sold for $3.6 million to Carolyn Rafaelian, the founder of the Rhode Island-based Alex and Ani jewelry company. By this point the house was again in need of significant work, and Rafaelian has spent several million more in order to restore it. The house is still open to the public for tours, but it has also been used for other events, including Jennifer Lawrence’s wedding in the fall of 2019.

The Breakers, Newport, Rhode Island (3)

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The view of The Breakers in Newport, seen from the south side of the property, around 1895. Image courtesy of the Library of Congress.

The scene in 2017:

The first photo was apparently taken around the same time as the one in the previous post, and shows the southeastern and southwestern sides of The Breakers, around the time that it was completed in 1895. The Classical Revival-style mansion was the work of noted architect Richard Morris Hunt, and the grounds of the 14-acre property were designed by landscape architect Ernest W. Bowditch. Some of this landscaping is visible in this scene, including the south parterre, which was planted with a variety of flowers in its formal garden.

The Breakers was the largest of the many opulent mansions that were built in Newport during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and it was originally the summer home of Cornelius Vanderbilt II and his wife Alice. Cornelius had inherited a substantial fortune from his father, William Henry Vanderbilt, and his grandfather, Cornelius Vanderbilt, and upon his death in 1899 he had a net worth of about $73 million – equivalent to about $2.2 billion today. The house would remain in the family for several more generations, with their daughter Gladys Széchenyi inheriting the property after Alice’s death in 1934, and Gladys’s daughter Sylvia inheriting it in 1968.

During this time, the house itself remained well-preserved, but the grounds underwent some changes. The 1938 hurricane caused only minimal damage to the house, but it significantly altered Bowditch’s landscaping. Over the years, the landscaping also suffered from neglect, and by the late 1950s the garden here on the south parterre were replaced with turf. Beginning in 1948, The Breakers was leased to the Preservation Society of Newport County for the nominal sum of $1 per year, and it was opened to the public for tours. The family continued to occupy the third floor of the house, but in 1972 Sylvia sold the property to the Preservation Society for $365,000, with the stipulation that she be allowed to use the third floor apartment for the rest of her life.

Today, the grounds look very different compared to their appearance over 120 years ago. However, the garden on the south parterre was replanted at some point after the Preservation Society acquired the property, and it now features a symmetrical design similar to what Bowditch had envisioned. In the meantime, the house itself has remained well-preserved on both the exterior and interior, and in 1994 it was designated as a National Historic Landmark. It is also the most popular tourist site in Rhode Island, drawing around 400,000 visitors each year.

The Breakers, Newport, Rhode Island (2)

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The Breakers in Newport, viewed from the southwest corner of the property, around 1895. Image courtesy of the Library of Congress.

The scene in 2017:

As discussed in an earlier post, The Breakers is the grandest of all the Gilded Age mansions that were built in Newport in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The 70-room, 125,000-square-foot “cottage” was built between 1893 and 1895, and was the home of Cornelius Vanderbilt II and his wife Alice. The Vanderbilts had purchased the property in 1885, which at the time included a smaller house that was also named The Breakers. This house burned down in 1892, and the Vanderbilts quickly commissioned noted architect Richard Morris Hunt to design its replacement.

The first photo shows The Breakers around the time of its completion. This is actually the side of the house, and it features a portico outside of the first floor music room. Directly above it is the rounded exterior wall of Alice Vanderbilt’s bedroom. At the time, mansions such as The Breakers were typically built with separate bedrooms for the husband and wife, and Cornelius’s was located directly to the left of hers, on the western corner of the house. On the left side of the house is the porte-cochère at the main entrance, and around the corner to the right is the terrace on the southeastern side of the house, which faces the ocean.

Cornelius Vanderbilt died in 1899, only a few years after The Breakers was completed, but Alice continued to own the property until her death in 1934 at the age of 89. She had not only outlived her husband and four of her seven children; she had also outlived the Gilded Age and the philosophy of conspicuous consumption that had led to the construction of The Breakers. The house, like many of the other mansion in Newport, had become an expensive white elephant, with astronomical operating costs from the property taxes, utilities, and the nearly 60 servants who were required to run the house.

Of Alice’s three surviving children, only her daughter Gladys had any interest in the property. She was the wife of Hungarian count László Széchenyi, and she inherited The Breakers after her mother’s death. She continued to own the house until her death in 1965, but starting in 1948 she leased it to the Preservation Society of Newport County, which opened it to the public for tours. Her daughter Sylvia would subsequently sell The Breakers to the organization in 1972, for $365,000, although she was allowed to retain a third-floor apartment for the rest of her life.

Sylvia died in 1998, but her children – the fourth generation to spend summers here in the house – were allowed to continue to use the third floor until early 2018, shortly after the second photo was taken. In the meantime, the first two floors have been open to the public for many years, drawing over 400,000 visitors annually. It is one of nine historic houses owned by the Preservation Society of Newport County, and in 1994 it was designated as a National Historic Landmark because of its historical and architectural significance.

Rosecliff, Newport, Rhode Island

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The Rosecliff mansion on Bellevue Avenue in Newport, around 1910-1915. Image courtesy of the Library of Congress, George Grantham Bain Collection.

The scene in 2018:

Rosecliff was one of the many Gilded Age summer homes that were built in Newport during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. It was completed in 1902, and was originally the home of businessman Hermann Oelrichs (1850-1906) and his wife, the silver heiress Theresa Fair Oelrichs (1871-1926). The property had previously been owned by George Bancroft (1800-1891), a prominent historian, politician, and diplomat who had served as U. S. Secretary of the Navy from 1845 to 1846, Minister to the United Kingdom from 1846 to 1849, and Minister to Germany from 1867 to 1874. During this time, he maintained a modest summer home here in Newport, which was named Rosecliff for his extensive rose garden.

Following Bancroft’s death in 1891, the Oelrichs purchased the Rosecliff property. The old house was demolished, and they hired the prominent architectural firm of McKim, Mead & White to design a new, larger, and far more elegant replacement. Most of the design work was done by Stanford White, whose earlier Newport commissions included the Isaac Bell House. Although built less than 20 years after the Isaac Bell House, Rosecliff represented a significant shift in White’s designs, from the Shingle style of the 1880s to the Beaux-Arts style of the turn of the century. It also reflected the changes in tastes among the Newport elite, who increasingly demanded summer “cottages” that were modeled after European palaces. In this case, Rosecliff was based on the design of the Grand Trianon at Versailles, which had been built during the reign of Louis XIV.

Hermann and Theresa Oelrichs lived in New York, but spent summers here at Rosecliff, where Theresa was one of the leaders of Newport society. As such, her house was designed for entertaining. Its ballroom, which measures 40 by 80 feet, is the largest in Newport, and it occupies the entire central section of the first floor, between the two projecting wings. The entire house has a total of 30 rooms, is 28,800 square feet in size, and was built at a cost of $2.5 million, or over $73 million today.

The house was built using the wealth that Theresa had inherited from her father, James Graham Fair (1831-1894). Fair had come to the United States in 1843 as a poor young Irish immigrant, but he went on to make his fortune in silver mining following the discovery of the Comstock Lode in Nevada. He also served one term as a U. S. Senator from Nevada, from 1881 to 1887, but was defeated for re-election in 1886. Despite – or perhaps because of – this vast wealth, Fair had a strained relationship with his wife and children, thanks in no small part to his serial adultery. His wife, also named Theresa, divorced him in 1883, and his daughter Theresa did not even invite him to her wedding in 1890. However, this did not stop the younger Theresa from accepting his $1 million wedding gift, nor the $40 million inheritance that she and her sister split after his death in 1894. She would eventually honor his legacy by building the Fairmont Hotel in San Francisco and naming it for him.

Hermann Oelrichs died in 1906, but Theresa continued to spend summers here at Rosecliff until her death in 1926 at the age of 55. Her only child, Hermann Oelrichs, Jr. (1891-1948) inherited the property, but by this point Newport’s massive Gilded Age mansions were falling out of fashion. This would only get worse in the wake of the Great Depression, and Oelrichs ultimately sold the house in 1941 for just $21,000. Adjusted for inflation, this was less than a half of a percent of what his parents had spent to build Rosecliff only 40 years earlier.

The new owner of Rosecliff was Gertrude Niesen (1911-1975), a singer, actress, and Vaudeville performer who was active during the 1930s and 1940s. She owned it for several years, but during this time the house sustained serious damage from a frozen water pipe. She subsequently sold it to Ray Alan Van Clief, who restored the interior, but he was killed in a car accident while on his way to visit the house for the first time after the completion of the renovations.

The next owner of the house was J. Edgar Monroe (1897-1992), a wealthy New Orleans businessman who purchased the property in 1947. He and his wife Louise spent summers here until 1971, when they donated Rosecliff to the Preservation Society of Newport County, a nonprofit organization that owns many of the historic mansions in Newport, including The Breakers and Marble House. The house was opened to the public, and over the years it has also been used as a filming location for a variety of movies, including The Great Gatsby (1974), True Lies (1994), Amistad (1997), and 27 Dresses (2008). Today, the exterior of the house has not significantly changed since the first photo was taken over a century ago, and it is now a contributing property in the Bellevue Avenue Historic District, which was designated as a National Historic Landmark district in 1973.

John Banister House, Newport, Rhode Island

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The house at 56 Pelham Street, at the corner of Spring Street in Newport, around 1930. Image courtesy of the Providence Public Library.

The house in 2017:

This large, elegant Georgian-style home was built in the early 1750s, and was built as the home of John Banister (1707-1767), a prosperous colonial merchant. Banister was originally from Boston, but subsequently came to Newport, where he married Hermione Pelham in 1737. She came from one of Newport’s leading families, and her great-grandfather, Benedict Arnold (1615-1678), had served for many years as the colonial governor of Rhode Island. Governor Arnold, whose other descendants included the Revolutionary War traitor of the same name, owned a significant amount of land in downtown Newport, including the Newport Tower, which still stands a few blocks away from here. This property was later inherited by the Pelham family, and then by John Banister after the death of his father-in-law in 1741.

Banister built this house on the property about a decade later. He and Hermione had two sons, John and Thomas, who grew up here, and John inherited the house after his father’s death in 1767. However, the two brothers later found themselves on opposite sides of the American Revolution. Thomas was a loyalist, and even enlisted in the British army during the occupation of Newport, while John supported American independence. In retaliation for his patriot views, the occupying British forces seized this house, along with John’s farm in nearby Middletown. The house became the headquarters of General Richard Prescott during the occupation, although John later reclaimed his property following the British evacuation of Newport in 1779. His brother Thomas was less fortunate, though. As a loyalist, his property was confiscated by colonial authorities, and he never returned to Newport after the army’s evacuation.

By the time the first photo was taken around 1930, the house was nearly 200 years old, and was already recognized for its historical significance. Then, in 1968, it became a contributing property in the Newport Historic District, a National Historic Landmark district that encompasses much of the downtown area. Over the years, the interior has been heavily modified, but the exterior has remained largely the same as it was when the house was built. Even these two photos, taken nearly 80 years apart, do not show much of a difference, aside from the removal of the shutters. However, in recent years the John Banister House has fallen into disrepair, as shown by several boarded-up windows in the 2017 photo. Shortly after this photo was taken, though, work began on a major renovation of both the interior and exterior, including restoring the original floor plan, replacing the shingles and windows, and repairing damage to the chimneys, foundation, and frame. When this work is completed, the house will again be used as a single-family home.

For more information on the Banister House and its ongoing restoration, see these articles here and here on the Newport This Week website.