Summer Cottages

From the late nineteenth-century to the early twentieth, Newport, Rhode Island, was a summer retreat for the wealthy magnates of industry from New York. They bought land and built summer cottages, where they would spend between 6 and 12 weeks every summer, for the season. Below is an example of one such cottage.

The Breakers

The Breakers was the summer escape of railroad magnate Cornelius Vanderbilt and his family. Make more sense now you know the name? When they called them cottages, they were being ironic. In today's numbers, these homes cost dozens of millions of dollars to build (one to two million dollars at the time), and they could cost up to seven million dollars a summer to run (up to $500,000 at the time). For the summer season was a social event. The homes were fully staffed (maybe 40 people or so), parties and balls were regular events and one tried their hardest to impress the rest of society. This was the gilded age - literally, there is a room within breakers that has platinum wall panels - and it lasted a comparatively short time. By the mid-twentieth century, most of these cottages had been torn down or sold. Many still survive though, looked after by the Newport Preservation Society or as part of the campus of Salve Regina University.

Chateau Sur Mer (Chateau by the sea)

Marble House

Daniel sick of my photography at Rosecliff

There's a significant number of large houses (not quite on the scale of the above) still being lived in privately. It's not really surprising - the fact that they cost in the region of $5 million aside - as Newport is a gorgeous little town on the water. There's a renowned cliff walk running for roughly 5 kilometers along the cliffs, which run behind many of the grandest mansions. We were planning to walk it in it's entirety but didn't get time. We did, however, walk sections of it.

Newport Cliffs

We wandered around town and found a pumpkin market.

Markets

Daniel, looking all Abercrombie and Fitch

What we didn't do was take a Segway tour through town. Some people did though.

"They see me rolling', They hatin'"

All in all a wicked place, and well worth a visit. It's mind-boggling really. In many ways these "cottages" are beautiful, tasteful and awe-inspiring. In others, they are vulgar and a grotesque display of excess wealth. These competing sentiments are not easy to reconcile.