Newport Wrap Up

On Thursday, July 9, before leaving Newport and heading back to Nantucket we stopped at the Preservation Society of Newport County’s conservation offices. The group has 11 properties that have thousands of square footage each and contain thousands of artifacts, yet they only have three full-time conservators! I’m guessing they do a lot of outsourcing, but still. They’re just plugging leaks and not thinking long term. Lack of funding for preventative maintenance is a recurring theme in historic preservation, and it’s no different in luxurious Newport.

Some of the repairs we saw: A collapsed ceiling at Chateau-sur-Mer and a tedious restoration of a fraying chair from Marble House.

Our packed schedule and poor weather prevented me from seeing more of Newport, but here’s some other photos I took.

We stayed at Ochre Lodge, a residence hall at Salve Regina University.

Many colonial houses still stand in the Newport Historic District.

Many of the restorations kept most of the historic integrity intact.

Cardines Field is one of the oldest ballparks in the U.S. There's evidence a park was here in 1893. Many top black baseball players have played here, and big leaguers (Yogi Berra, Bob Feller, Phil Rizzuto) stationed at the nearby Navy base also played here.

The grandstands date to 1936. The park gets a lot of use. High school, college, Babe Ruth League, and New England Collegiate Baseball League teams all play there.

Newport Part 3

On Thursday, our third and final day in Newport, we went to The Breakers, the best-known of the city’s “cottages.” Though I think the Marble House was more extravagant, The Breakers certainly lived up to its expectations.

The 65,000-square-foot mansion has 70 rooms. It was finished in 1895 and cost $7 million to build. Richard Morris Hunt was the architect who designed The Breakers to look like an Italian Renaissance mansion (see, Mediterranean mega mansions also were sought after more than a hundred years ago). Like the Marble House, it was built for a Vanderbilt heir. Vanderbilt descendants still live on the third floor and they own all the original furnishings.

Charlie Burns, a curator for the Preservation Society of Newport, showed us around. Photography isn’t allowed inside, but because we were were a special group, we were allowed. Some of the many guards had trouble getting used to this. Unfortunately, my camera isn’t the best and the combination of lack of light and giant rooms resulted in mediocre pictures. Then again, few cameras could do the place justice. Here they are anyway:

The Great Hall.

Dining room.

It's hard to fathom the craftsmanship in The Breakers and all the Newport mansions we visited. I felt guilty giving a room a quick look over and moving on when so much labor went into each detail.

The bathtub is carved from a single piece of marble and has faucets for hot and cold fresh water and hot and cold salt water.

The Great Hall is 50 x 50 x 50.

Where the servants toiled.