The Breakers, Renaissance Revival mansion in Newport, United States
Description
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.
History
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.
Culture
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.
Practical
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.
Did you know?
The basement houses an extensive electrical installation from the eighteen nineties that was remarkably modern for its time. Special basement tours reveal this technical setup that staff used for kitchen, heating, and lighting operations.
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These North American houses tell the story of big wealth built during the industrial age. Around the late 1800s and early 1900s, families like the Vanderbilts and the Hearsts built homes that mix European styles with new ideas in building. The Breakers in Newport draws from Italian Renaissance ideas...
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