Newport, the Gilded Age Mansions, oh excuse me - "Summer Cottages". "If you've got it, flaunt it" was obviously the motto. Before we'd even gotten inside a mansion we had bought an annual membership because it was only $10.00 more than the 5 house package. And there were nine properties on the tour. Our plan of one day in Newport looked shaky at best.
The first and most impressive cottage was "The Breakers", a Vanderbilt Mansion. 70 rooms, 62,482 sq ft on five floors.
From the street.
The ocean side.
The Great Hall
The Great Hall from the second floor. This room is over 50 ft high.
And now I admit, I don't know what to do. Our division of labor has been that Carol takes the pictures and I write the Blog and pick the pictures for it.
She took 110 pictures.
Of this one house.
Actually, I'm pretty sure she took more than that but deleted many of them.
After these four, I just don't know what to do. EVERY room is more ridiculously extravagant than the one before. When you can afford to spend over $7,000,000. in 1895 - that's equivalent to over $150,000,000. today - you can make a pretty outrageous statement. Like 33 rooms JUST FOR THE SERVANTS.
The self-guided audio tour is 45 minutes. But, to quote a docent, "If you have extra time, there is more information on most of the rooms." We were there about 3 hours.
The music room. A fine example of "gilding". There is no gold paint in this room. Everything that looks like gold is - gold leaf. Applied inch by inch to cover the surfaces. Its thickness can vary from as thick as 1/250,000th of an inch to as thin as 4 and 5 millionths of an inch. So incredibly fragile that it most likely cost as much for the labor to install it as the actual cost of the gold.
If you're going to put a door on a cabinet, might as well decorate it with a little bit of carving.
The dining room - seating for 36. The children were not allowed. The rule was broken for a birthday party but the youngest child was still not allowed. She locked everybody in and - HORROR - they had to exit through the servants' entrance.
The library. With lots more gold leaf.
The kitchen. Carol loved this room. I think because no women were ever allowed in here. She says that she also liked the copper pots. The coal fired cast iron stove is over 21 ft long. No "burners", the entire surface was used.
Many of the facts apply to all of the "cottages", such as - there were custom made covers for every piece of furniture, chandelier, wall sconce, art and decorative piece to protect them for the 42 weeks the house was unused. A small staff would live in the house year round but the house servants would travel with the family back to NYC or FL or wherever they went. All their silver went with them too, in custom made trunks.
We started our tour with the largest, but the neighbors did a pretty good job at their attempt of "keeping up with the Vanderbilts."
To be continued........
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