12/08/2026
This week we’re in Newport, Rhode Island, preparing for an incredible celebration and learning all about America’s Gilded Age, in all its extraordinary, unapologetic glory. This is Bellevue Avenue, and the mansions the Newport Preservation Society saved, known, with magnificent understatement, as “cottages”.
This first house was built by Cornelius and Alva Vanderbilt in 1892, out of what was perhaps the greatest architectural rivalry in American history, between Alva and her sister-in-law Alice, who build The Breakers, just along the avenue.
Known as The Marble House, Alva shipped in marble from Italy to keep her cool during the few weeks a year they summered here. The interiors absolutely stop you in your tracks, even now.
This is The Breakers, Alice’s cottage, which is so enormous the photos don’t do it justice, and which is undergoing extensive work now.
This is the famous Cliff Walk, from which you can see all these mansions in their glory, overlooking the sea.
What makes Newport endlessly fascinating is that the story hasn’t ended.
The mansions are being preserved and lived in today by a new generation, Larry Ellison, Steve Schwarzman, are, among others, pouring money into these extraordinary houses, ensuring they survive for generations to come.
In doing so the residents immortalise their names in American history, just as the Vanderbilts did 130 years before them.
New money versus old money. The desire to build something magnificent, to be remembered, and leave a mark.
Plus ça change!
More to come!
