The Breakers, Renaissance Revival mansion in Newport, United States
The Breakers is a mansion built in the Renaissance Revival style along Cliff Walk in Newport, Rhode Island. The building rises five floors with seventy rooms constructed from limestone, marble, and steel framing that overlooks the Atlantic Ocean.
Cornelius Vanderbilt II commissioned architect Richard Morris Hunt to design the residence between eighteen ninety-three and eighteen ninety-five, after an earlier wooden house burned down. The design drew inspiration from sixteenth-century Italian palaces and marked the peak of the Gilded Age in America.
The name refers to the waves of the Atlantic breaking against the rocks at the foot of the cliffs below. The great hall with its Corinthian columns and the evening light over the ocean illustrate the lifestyle of America's upper class around nineteen hundred.
The Newport Preservation Society organizes daily guided tours that allow visitors to walk through the main rooms and terraces. An elevator is available, and refreshments can be found at the café near the entrance.
The Breakers was among the first private houses fitted with electric current and an elevator. Bathrooms offered a choice of fresh or sea water, each warm or cold, and the boiler sat in an underground space beneath the front lawn so the house held no wooden parts.
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