AMERICAN ESTATES AND GARDENS 



Splendid building, therefore, is a fundamental principle of Newport building. And so 

 great have been its architectural activities of late years that a friendly rivalry has sprung up 

 among the owners of its large houses as to who shall have the most magnificent home. Each 

 new house is grander and finer than its predecessors. The resources of our most resourceful 

 architects are taxed to their utmost; the skill and ingenuity of our decorators and furnishers 

 are all but exhausted that the spacious mansion be fitly decorated and amply furnished; the 

 taste of our best landscape architects is brought into play that the grounds and gardens be in 



Copyright. 1897. by Frank II. Child, Newport. K.I. 



"THE BREAKERS" THE LIBRARY. 



keeping with the lavish scale in which each great house is maintained. If the social life is 

 maintained at a high key, the architectural life, so to speak, is raised to a corresponding degree. 

 The architectural thought which lay behind the creation of Versailles is identical with 

 the ideas that have brought the great houses of Newport into existence. It is true that Ver- 

 sailles was a single palace, built by a despotic monarch for his own delight, while Newport is 

 an aggregation of palaces, built not by despots, but by free American citizens. But the palace 

 of Versailles was a vast architectural background for court fetes and festivities of all sorts. 

 Just so the palaces of Newport are architectural backgrounds for the pleasures and sports of 



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