1900s

140-144 Bellevue Avenue, Newport, Rhode Island

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The commercial block at the corner of Bellevue Avenue and Deblois Street in Newport, around 1906. Image courtesy of the Providence Public Library.

The scene in 2017:

In the late 19th century, Shingle-style architecture became virtually synonymous with New England coastal resort communities, and Newport featured many of the style’s pioneering works. Although this building can hardly compare to the Newport Casino or Isaac Bell House further up Bellevue Avenue, it nonetheless shows the style’s influence on local architecture. This particular building dates back to the 1890s, and was originally the home of the Kazanjian Company, a rug company whose store was located in the ground floor, as seen in the first photo.

The Kazanjian Company was founded in 1882 by Bedros and John Kazanjian, two brothers who immigrated to Newport from Armenia. City directories list their business here at this address throughout the 1880s, although the current building does not appear to have been built until the following decade. Either way, by the time the first photo was taken around 1906 they were selling a wide variety of household goods beyond just rugs. The sign above the first-floor windows advertises “Oriental rugs, portieres, embroideries, draperies,antiques, bric-a-brac, curios,” and some of their rugs are on display outside of the windows.

The Kazanjian family also operated a store nearby at the present-day corner of Bellevue Avenue and Memorial Boulevard, right next to the Newport Casino. Both of these stores would remain in business for many years, appearing in city directories into the 1960s. During this time, the upper floors were rented as apartments. The 1920 census, for example, shows seven different households, primarily single people and married couples with no children. The occupations were highly varied, and included workers at a dress shop, a photographer’s studio, a beauty shop, a grocery store, and the U.S. Navy base in Newport.

More than 110 years after the first photo was taken, Newport remains a popular coastal resort, and Bellevue Avenue is still a premier shopping area. Kazanjian & Company is long gone from here, and the building’s storefronts have seen some minor alterations over the years, but overall the building remains well-preserved. It is a mixed-use property still, with three stores on the first floor and apartments on the upper floors, and it is one of the many historic 19th century buildings that still line Bellevue Avenue.

Buckley Block, Newport, Rhode Island

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The building at the corner of Broadway and Oak Street in Newport, around 1903. Image courtesy of the Providence Public Library.

The scene in 2017:

This commercial block was built around the turn of the 20th century, and was originally owned by Patrick Buckley, an Irish-born grocer whose store was located here in the building. The sign is not legible in the first photo, but the corner storefront has meat on display in the windows, along with what appears to be shelves with bottles. The store, which he operated with his sons David and John, was here until around the early 1910s, but by the middle of the decade the ground floor of the building was the home of the I.X.L. Company, a furniture store that, according to its advertisement in the city directory, had “Office and house furnishings of every description.”

The building was owned by the Buckley family until 1928, and the I.X.L. Company was here until at least the early 1930s. However, they appear to have left soon after, because they are not listed in the 1935 city directory. By the early 1950s, there were at least three different stores on the ground floor, with the 1951 city directory listing Minkin Auto & Radio Store on the left side, Valeteria Cleansers in the middle, and Cote Pharmacy on the right side. Along with these commercial tenants, the two upper floors were rented out as apartments.

Around 115 years after the first photo was taken, the building is still standing, although the exterior has had some significant alterations over the years. As originally built, the Buckley Block had a Colonial Revival-style exterior, with decorative elements such as shutters on the windows, a balustrade on the roof, and quoins at the corners of the upper floors. However, at some point – probably in the early 1900s – these were removed and the exterior was covered in wood shingles. The storefronts have also been significantly altered, with only the one on the left bearing much resemblance to the original photo. Overall, though, the building has retained much of its early 20th century appearance, and it is now a contributing property in the Newport Historic District.

Broadway from Spring Street, Newport, Rhode Island

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Looking north on Broadway from near the corner of Spring Street in Newport, around 1904. Image courtesy of the Providence Public Library.

The scene in 2017:

When the first photo was taken, the west side of Broadway was lined with a variety of wood-framed commercial buildings that dated back to the 19th century. The ones in the foreground, at the corner of Marlborough Street, appear to have been the oldest, with the gambrel-roofed building on the far left probably over a century old at this point. The building just to the right of it, with the three dormer windows, may have been almost as old, and was probably built in the early decades of the 19th century. Just beyond it, the gable-roofed building was somewhat newer, dating to around the 1840s, and the larger, more ornate building on the right side was probably built around the 1860s or 1870s.

The first photo shows signs for a number of different businesses in these storefronts. The one on the left was William S. Hazard’s meat market, while G. B. Smith’s furniture repair company was located out of the back of the building. Continuing to the right was Sam Lee Laundry, followed by an ice cream shop with a sign on the sidewalk that reads “Try our ice cream.” A carriage blocks the view of the next storefront, but the gable-roofed building to the right of it has a sign for the Newport Paper Company. A young boy was apparently posing for the camera, and can be seen seated on a hitching post in front of Sam Lee Laundry.

Today, much of downtown Newport has remained remarkably well-preserved, but this particular scene along Broadway has seen more drastic changes over the past 113 years. Only one building, the 1840s gable-roofed one in the center of the scene, is still standing from the first photo. The two buildings on the left are long gone, and the site is now a small plaza at the corner of Broadway and Marlborough Street. Further in the distance, these buildings were demolished by the late 1920s to build the Paramount Theatre, which opened in 1929. This project also included the construction of one-story commercial buildings on either side of the theater, and these are still standing today. The theater building is also still there, partially visible in the distant center, but it was converted into apartments in the 1980s.

Anna Pell House, Newport, Rhode Island

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The house at the corner of Mary and Clarke Streets in Newport, around 1903. Image courtesy of the Providence Public Library.

The house in 2017:

This house was built sometime around the late 1870s or early 1880s, and was originally owned by Anna Pell, although she does not appear to have personally lived here. Born in 1817 in Cooperstown, New York, Anna was the daughter of George Clarke, a prominent landowner who owned Hyde Hall, a mansion on Lake Otsego that was said to have been the largest private home in the country at the time. She and her husband, Duncan C. Pell, subsequently lived here in Newport, in a house on the opposite side of Mary Street from here. Duncan served as lieutenant governor of Rhode Island from 1865 to 1866, and the 1870 census lists him as a retired merchant, with a net worth of nearly $400,000, or nearly $8 million today.

Duncan Pell died in 1874, and within the next decade Anna built this house across the street from their home. She appears to have continued to live in her husband’s house across the street until her death in 1899, but during this time she rented this newer house to Sidney Woollett, who was living here with his wife Julia by around 1885. Woollett was an elocutionist who was notable for his public poetry recitations, specializing in Shakespeare, Longfellow, and Poe, and he appeared to have had some sort of personal connection to Anna Pell, because in 1884 he named his youngest daughter Anna Pell Woollett. Along with Anna, he and Julia had three other children, and the family lived here until the end of the 19th century, around the same time that Anna Pell died.

By the time the first photo was taken a few years later, the house was owned by Patrick J. Boyle, the longtime mayor of Newport. He was the child of Irish immigrants, and was born in Newport in 1860. As a teenager, Boyle had begun working for the Newport Gas Light Company, and served for many years as the company’s bookkeeper. In 1895, he was elected to his first term as mayor, and over the next few decades he was re-elected to sixteen more terms in office, a remarkable record for a Democrat in a largely Republican city. His first wife, Anne, died sometime before he moved into this house, and in the early 1900s he remarried to his second wife, Alice Lee. He had one son, Patrick, from his first marriage, and he and Alice had two daughters: Alice and Barbara.

Patrick Boyle was still serving as mayor, and was still living in this house, when he died in 1923. The rest of his family continued to live here for several more years, but around 1928 Alice moved to New York City. Around 90 years later, the house remains well-preserved, although partially hidden by trees and other vegetation from this angle. Along with the rest of the historic 17th, 18th, and 19th century buildings in the center of Newport, the house is now part of the Newport Historic District, which was designated as a National Historic Landmark in 1968.

Cliff Walk, Newport, Rhode Island

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Looking north on the Cliff Walk from Ochre Point at The Breakers in Newport, around 1900-1906. Image courtesy of the Library of Congress, Detroit Publishing Company Collection.

The scene in 2017:

One of Newport’s most popular attractions is the 3.5-mile Cliff Walk, a trail that runs along the rocky cliffs on the southeastern side of Newport. It is famous for both the scenic beauty of the Atlantic coastline, as well as the architectural grandeur of the Gilded Age mansions on the opposite side, but its origins were far more practical than recreational. Much to the chagrin of millionaire property owners who would come several centuries later, the legal concept behind the Cliff Walk came in 1663, when King Charles II granted Rhode Island a charter that, among other rights, allowed all colonists to fish along the shoreline. This doctrine of publicly-accessible shores was later enshrined in the state constitution, and is still in effect today.

In the early years of Newport’s history, this right was of little significance here on the sparsely-settled southeastern shore, and there was not much to prevent people from walking along the cliffs if they felt so inclined. However, by the mid-19th century Newport was becoming a popular summer resort, and the right of people to walk along the cliffs soon came into conflict with the privacy and the property rights of the millionaires who built their summer homes here along the coast. As a result, many of the landowners built fences or hedges for privacy, making many of the mansions completely invisible from the trail.

The first photo was taken from the easternmost part of the trail, at Ochre Point behind The Breakers, the famous home of Cornelius Vanderbilt II. The gates in the distance on the left mark where the trail leaves the Vanderbilt property, and beyond the gates is the roof of Ochre Court, the home of prominent real estate developer Ogden Goelet. Like The Breakers, this house was designed by architect Richard Morris Hunt, and was the largest in Newport when it was completed in 1892, although it would soon be surpassed by The Breakers itself, which was completed in 1895. However, by the time the first photo was taken only about a decade later, both Vanderbilt and Goelet were dead, although the houses would remain in their families until well into the 20th century.

Today, more than a century after the first photo was taken, this landscape has remained remarkably unchanged. Although not visible in the 2017 photograph, both The Breakers and Ochre Court are still standing, as are many of the other Gilded Age mansions along the Cliff Walk. However, most of these are no longer privately owned, thanks to changing tastes and the incredible upkeep costs of these houses. What had been an extravagant symbols of wealth in the late 19th century had become expensive white elephants by the mid-20th century, and today The Breakers is a museum while Ochre Court is the administration building for Salve Regina University.

The Breakers, Newport, Rhode Island

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The Breakers, seen from the Cliff Walk in Newport, around 1904. Image courtesy of the Library of Congress, Detroit Publishing Company Collection.

The scene in 2017:

Newport is renowned for its many 19th and early 20th century summer “cottages,” which were built by many of the nation’s wealthiest families and represented some of the finest examples of residential architecture in this era. However, none could quite compare to The Breakers, which was completed in 1895 as a summer home for Cornelius Vanderbilt II, the prominent railroad tycoon who had inherited much of the Vanderbilt family fortune from his father William and grandfather Cornelius. With 70 rooms and over 125,000 square feet, it dwarfed all of the other Newport mansions, and it would go on to epitomize the luxury, grandeur, and excess of the Gilded Age.

The Breakers is situated on Ochre Point, a rocky promontory on Newport’s eastern shoreline, and was built on the site of a previous mansion of the same name. The original Breakers was a wooden, Queen Anne-style mansion that had been designed by the prominent architectural firm of Peabody and Stearns for tobacco merchant Pierre Lorillard IV. It was completed in 1878, but he owned the house for less than a decade before selling it to Cornelius Vanderbilt in 1885 for $450,000, in what was at the time the largest real estate transaction in Newport’s history.

As the favorite grandson and namesake of the family patriarch, Cornelius Vanderbilt II had inherited $5 million after his grandfather’s death in 1877. Nearly all of the remaining family fortune, close to $100 million, had gone to Cornelius’s father, William H. Vanderbilt, who managed to double this amount in jut a few years. However, William died in 1885, just a few months after his son purchased The Breakers, and Cornelius inherited nearly $70 million from his estate, equivalent to nearly $2 billion today.

Cornelius’s younger brother, William K. Vanderbilt, had received a similar inheritance from their father, and he and his socially ambitious wife Alva soon set out to build Marble House nearby on Bellevue Avenue. This lavish mansion far exceeded the original Breakers in opulence, and its $11 million construction costs dwarfed the paltry $450,000 that Cornelius had spent to purchase his summer home. Marble House was completed in 1892, but later that year The Breakers was destroyed in a fire, providing Cornelius with the opportunity to eclipse his brother and sister-in-law in constructing a new summer home.

At the time of the fire here in Newport, Cornelius was just finishing a $3 million expansion of his massive Fifth Avenue mansion, making it the largest private home in New York City’s history. Despite this, he and his wife Alice spared no expense in rebuilding The Breakers. They hired Richard Morris Hunt, the same architect who had designed Marble House, and within six weeks of the fire he had produced preliminary designs for the house. Cornelius and Alice ended up choosing his second design, though, which was inspired by Italian Renaissance-style architecture, and construction began in the spring of 1893.

The house was completed in just two years, thanks to the efforts of some 2,000 workers who worked in shifts, both day and night, to ensure that it was completed as soon as possible. It was much larger, and had been built in far less time than Marble House, but at $7 million it had actually cost significantly less to build, with William having spent $7 million just on marble alone. It would be Richard Morris Hunt’s magnum opus and, as it turned out, his last major commission, as he died in Newport while supervising the finishing touches in the summer of 1895. The house’s completion came none too soon for Cornelius Vanderbilt, though, who was only able to enjoy one summer at the house in good health before suffering a debilitating stroke in 1896.

Cornelius, Alice, and their children would continue to spend several more summers here at The Breakers, but Cornelius never fully recovered his health and he died of a cerebral hemorrhage in September 1899, a day after returning to New York City from Newport. Alice would outlive him by 35 years, and became known as “Alice of the Breakers” for her long ownership of the house. However, the Gilded Age was rapidly drawing to a close at the turn of the 20th century, as was the Vanderbilt family’s wealth and prominence. William H. Vanderbilt’s children, including Cornelius, had done little to grow the family fortune, but excelled at spending it, particularly on lavish mansions in New York and summer houses such as The Breakers, Marble House, and the Biltmore Estate.

By Alice’s death in 1934 at the age of 89, the family fortune had been squandered and divided among so many descendants that it was essentially gone. Most of the New York City mansions, including her own Fifth Avenue home, were gone, replaced by modern high-rises, and the many summer homes in Newport and elsewhere were already antiquated white elephants from a long-gone era. During Alice’s later years, taxes alone on The Breakers amounted to $83,000 per year, plus operating expenses that included paying nearly 60 servants and other employees, along with 150 tons of coal to heat the house each winter. She eventually took to alternating years spent in Newport and New York, so that both houses were never open simultaneously.

Of Alice’s seven children, she outlived all but three of them. Her first child, Alice, had died as a child in 1874, and she subsequently lost her oldest son William to typhoid fever in 1892 while he was in college. Alfred died aboard the RMS Lusitania, when it was sunk by a German submarine during World War I, and Alice’s youngest son, Reginald, was a compulsive gambler and alcoholic who died of cirrhosis in 1925, a year after the birth of his daughter, future fashion designer Gloria Vanderbilt. Her only other son, Cornelius Vanderbilt III, was disinherited by his father for his unapproved marriage, and neither he nor his sister, the famous sculptor Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney, had much interest in acquiring The Breakers.

As a result, the mansion ultimately went to Alice’s youngest child, Gladys, who was 47 at the time and married to a Hungarian count, László Széchenyi. She owned the property for the rest of her life, until her death in 1965, but in 1948 she began leasing the house to the Preservation Society of Newport County, and for the first time it was opened to the public. She would continue to maintain an apartment on the third-floor, as would her daughter Sylvia, but otherwise the rest of the house was preserved as a museum. Sylvia ultimately sold The Breakers to the Preservation Society in 1972 for just $365,000, substantially less than what her grandfather had paid for the original house 87 years earlier, although the sale included a stipulation that she be allowed to continue to use the third floor apartment for the rest of her life.

After Sylvia’s death in 1998, the third floor continued to be used by her children, Paul and Gladys Szápáry, for the next 20 years, but in early 2018 the Preservation Society asked them to leave, citing safety concerns. This move came shortly after the Szápárys voiced their opposition to the Preservation Society’s controversial decision to build a welcome center on the property, which many critics argued would mar its original landscape and historic appearance. Their departure ends four generations and nearly 123 years of the Vanderbilt family living here, but it also gives the Preservation Society the opportunity to restore the third floor and make it accessible to the public for the first time.

Today, The Breakers is one of the nine historic Newport homes that are owned by the Preservation Society and open to the public. Aside from the colonial-era Hunter House, all of these are Gilded Age mansions that represent some of the finest examples of residential architecture in 19th century America, including William and Alva Vanderbilt’s Marble House. However, The Breakers remains, by far, the largest and most impressive of these homes, and has been well-preserved over the years, as these two photos show. Because of its architectural significance, it was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1994, and it is now one of Rhode Island’s most popular tourist destinations, attracting over 400,000 visitors per year.