Advertisement
Published: September 24th 2014
Edit Blog Post
Today we drove southwest of Plymouth about 60 miles to Providence Rhode Island. It is a very pretty town situated on the Atlantic Ocean. This year the town is celebrating its 375th anniversary. Many of the streets are very narrow. There are many homes and buildings on the National Historical Register. As we were approaching the town, you can see many mansions built high above the water. There is a walk called the Cliff Walk that you can take below the homes that is about 3.5 miles long. We walked a portion of the walk and then decided to drive into town to see what was there. Parking is a premium there. It costs $2.50 to park just half an hour. We were going to have lunch downtown but decided to drive a little farther away from downtown. It was very busy there. I believe that there were some cruise ships there in the harbor. We finally ate lunch at the Newport Creamery. It has been in business since 1928. Unfortunately, the service was very poor and I think we were there over two hours just to get a sandwich and some ice cream. That took up some of our sightseeing
time. We finally arrived at the area where there are several mansions that are maintained by The Preservation Society of Newport County. We visited one called the Breakers. It was built between 1893 and 1895 as a summer home for Cornelius Vanderbilt. It is situated on 13 acres and overlooks the Atlantic Ocean. It has 70 rooms and has 62,482 square feet on five floors. 33 of the rooms were for help. The central Great Hall has 45 foot high ceilings. You are not allowed to take pictures inside. Many of the rooms have articles and walls painted with gold leaf and some paintings done in platinum. There is extensive use of marble . It is really hard to describe. On the outside, the entrance has sculpted iron gates and the 30 foot high walkway gates are part of a 12 foot high limestone and iron fence that borders the property on all but the ocean side. Many of the rooms were built in Europe, shipped to the U.S, and reassembled in place in Newport. Cornelius Vanderbilt II purchased the grounds in 1885 for $450,000. When the previous mansion that was on the property burned in 1892, he decided to
rebuild in splendor. Vanderbilt insisted that the building be made as fireproof as possible. The structure of the building used steel trusses and no wooden parts. He even required that the boiler be located away from the house, in an underground space below the front lawn. Unfortunately Vanderbilt died from a stroke in 1899 leaving the Breakers to his wife, Alice.. She outlived her husband by 35 years and died at the age of 89 in 1934. In her will, The Breakers was given to her youngest daughter Countess Gladys Szechenyi, essentially because Gladys lacked American property. Also, none of Alice's other children were interested in the property, while Gladys had always loved the estate. In 1948, Gladys leased the high-maintenance property to the Preservation Society of Newport County for $1 a year. The Preservation Society bought The Breakers and approximately 90% of its furnishings in 1972 for $365,000 from Countess Sylvia Szapary, the daughter of Gladys. However, the agreement with the Society granted life tenancy to the Countess Szapary. Upon her death in 1998, The Preservation Society agreed to allow the family to continue to live on the third floor during the summer. This is not open to the
public. It is now the most-visited attraction in Rhode Island with approximately 400,000 visitors annually and is open daily year-round, except Thanksgiving and Christmas Day. I thought some of these things were interesting. Even though there was electricity in the house, Mr. Vanderbilt had gas installed in the lights. This way if the electricity failed, the lights could be run on gas. Also, in the bathtub, there were four handles. One for hot and one for cold. Then one for hot salt water and one for cold salt water. I believe that they thought the salt water was good to bathe in. Also, there were 3 cisterns in the attic. One smaller cistern supplied hydraulic pressure for the 1895 Otis lift, that is still functioning in the house though it was wired for electricity in 1933. Two larger cisterns supplied fresh and salt water to the many bathrooms in the house. Also, I thought that it was interesting that the stables for the horses were three blocks away.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.319s; Tpl: 0.014s; cc: 13; qc: 48; dbt: 0.1852s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb