Newport Mansion: The Breakers

Photo: Patrick O’Connor, courtesy of The Preservation Society of Newport County.

Opulence is a word easily applied to the grandest of Newport Rhode Island’s summer “cottages” – The Breakers. The 70-room house was built on the grandest scale, designed to be splendid in every detail, yet including family quarters that could almost be described as intimate.

Italian Renaissance Palazzo
In 1892 a fire destroyed the original wooden structure on the site and Cornelius Vanderbilt II commissioned architect Richard Morris Hunt to replace it with an Indiana limestone Italian Renaissance palazzo inspired by the sixteenth-century palaces of Genoa and Turin. It was to be constructed of non-flammable materials and was completed with amazing speed by a team of some 2,500 craftsmen and artisans between 1893 and 1895. The family took residence immediately, and in August 1895, the Vanderbilt’s daughter, Gertrude, celebrated her coming out party in the house.
Allard and Sons of Paris were hired to assist Hunt with the furnishings and interior design, Karl Bitter created the relief sculpture, and Boston architect Ogden Codman decorated the family quarters. The level of artistic detail in this building is superb, especially the mosaic work in the loggia and billiard room.
“The fine stonework, metal, marble, and carving reflects Richard Morris Hunt’s European training,” comments John Tschirch, architectural historian and Director of Academic Programs at the Preservation Society. “He was a connoisseur of building ornament; and that level of expertise was relatively new to America at this time.”

The House’s Public Rooms
Most important to the mansion is the great hall, the ultimate space in The Breakers. A full two stories high and paved with squares of marble, it was the room where guests were greeted. It has magnificent views of the ocean through French doors opening onto the loggia. Rising more than 40 feet, the galleried great hall is 60-feet square. The walls are of Caen stone inlaid with rare marbles. The grand staircase rises from this room to a landing and from there continues in twin flights sweeping upward in graceful curves to the second floor.
The dining room is immense and in many respects is as sumptuous as the great hall. Measuring 42 by 58 feet, it also is two stories high. Twelve freestanding red alabaster columns support a swag-enriched frieze and cornice. The rich material and fine ornament of this room remains unexcelled in American interior design.
The music room was designed by Richard Bouwens Van der Boyen in Paris. It was built there, dismantled, and then shipped to Newport. Inspired by the finest French buildings such as the Paris Opera, the walls are sheathed in pale gray and gold paneling and enhanced by rich green and gold fabrics. The room with its French cut-velvet upholstery is highly theatrical and suggests the ultimate in drama.
The use of marble in the billiard room is remarkable. Edged in alabaster, the blue marble shines and emphasizes the mosaic floor and ceiling. The beautifully cut and finished marble room is a symphony of supreme craftsmanship and precision cutting.

The Breakers dining room. Photo: John Corbett, courtesy of The Preservation Society of Newport County.

A Family House
For all of its splendor, The Breakers was very much a family house. The mansion was very important to the Vanderbilt family as they only had two residences. The other was on Fifth Avenue at 57th Street in New York City on the property where Bergdorf Goodman stands today. They lived in Newport a full six months each year.
The first floor rooms are magnificently grand and presented a public face for the family, but the second and third floors are far more private. Behind the Italian Renaissance façade was a thoroughly modern American house – an efficient machine for living well.
The entire second floor family quarters were designed by Ogden Codman, a friend of Edith Wharton. This contract really made his reputation as a designer. Both Mr. Vanderbilt and Codman were great advocates of modern comfort and convenience. Every room was designed with numerous closets for storage. Every bedroom also had a speaker phone connecting it with servants, its own bathroom, and hot and cold running fresh and salt water (which was considered therapeutic).
Everywhere there are very narrow passageways for servants and footmen for the purpose of hanging coats, delivering trays, and running errands. The servants were almost inconspicuous and the intent was to make it appear that the house was run almost by magic. The mansion is installed with a very sophisticated servant communication system. Initially, it consisted of a call bell system monitored from the butler’s pantry. Speaker tubes were connected to the family quarters as well. A 70-room house with three full floors requires an enormous staff. In the north wing alone there are 33 staff bedrooms. Caretakers also lived at the cottage by the gates and more lived off-site by the cutting gardens, greenhouses, and carriage house.

Very Much a Ladies’ House
In 1896, Mr. Vanderbilt suffered a debilitating stroke, which made him an invalid for the last four years of his life. During his illness, and even more so after his death, The Breakers became very much a ladies’ house, run by women. Mrs. Vanderbilt’s ladies’ reception room, very small and almost a perfect square, underscores this attitude. The room is lined with French paneled woodwork, one of the first known installations of eighteenth- century boiserie in America, and was considered the very height of fashion.
Under the stewardship of its women, the house survived almost intact with virtually no changes other than a few replacement draperies. The Vanderbilts had seven children, but the youngest daughter Gladys, who married Count Laszlo Szenchenyi of Hungary, inherited the house on her mother’s death in 1934. She was an ardent preservationist and in 1948 opened the house to raise funds for the Preservationist Society. In 1972, the group purchased the house from her heirs. Today it is designated a National Historic Landmark.

Relationship Between the House and Sea
According to Tschirch, one of the most important things about The Breakers is the brilliance of how the architect situated the house to take advantage of its views of the sea. The relationship between the house and the ocean is dramatic because of its 30-foot elevation, and is part of the reason that a visit here becomes so magical. It’s a visually spectacular site and the house with its marble and its colors is magnificent. The basic interior color pattern is blue-gray, rose, and green. These colors interplay beautifully with the lawns outside and the changing colors of the sea.
“I think The Breakers captures a moment in America’s culture,” said Tschirch. “The house is an emblem of the spirit of the American Renaissance.”
What house better exemplifies this movement? The exterior style is completely infused with every American technology and comfort. The mansion reflects the energy and optimism of the era and through it the classicism of the past becomes an emblem for a new America.

For more information, contact The Breakers, The Preservation Society of Newport County, 424 Belleview Avenue, Newport, RI 02840, call (401) 847-1000, or go online to www.newportmansions.org.