AMERICAN ESTATES AND GARDENS 



its inhabitants. The scale is different, the place and the manners, but the architectural mean- 

 ing of both is identical. 



The Newport house must be large, splendid, and expensive. It will be the scene of 

 many costly entertainments, and it must, therefore, properly set forth the wealth and social 

 position of its owner. It must be suitably environed in handsome grounds; it must be rich 

 within and without; it must have large rooms for entertaining, and be furnished and 

 decorated in keeping with the means of its owner; it must possess architectural interest, and 

 must excite the admiration of every one fortunate enough to behold it or privileged to enter its 

 well-guarded portals. And all of this is natural and entirely in keeping with the ideas around 

 which Newport has been developed as a favorite watering place. The great houses are not 

 luxuries, from the standpoint of their owners, but necessities. They are not large for the 

 simple purpose of impressing the wayfarer, but because great spaces are needed within them. 

 They are not splendid for the sheer display of wealth, but because splendid houses are quite 

 rightly regarded as the one kind of house perfectly suited to their wealthy inmates. They are 

 not gorgeously furnished that the money value of the many costly objects within them may 

 be the object of friendly boasting among their owners, but because these rich and beautiful 

 things are precisely the things their owners wish to live among. Newport, at all events, illus- 

 trates splendid living in the most splendid fashion it has yet attained in America, so far as 

 a group of houses and a group of people are concerned. It is only from this point of view that 

 its houses can be appreciated. 



"The Breakers," the House of Mrs. Cornelius Vanderbilt. 



Mrs. Cornelius Vanderbilt's mansion, "The Breakers," at the time at which it was built, 

 and that but a few years since, established a new standard in Newport building. Designed in 

 the Italian style, its three main fronts are thoroughly well studied and quite monumental. 

 Each has strong individuality one a two-story arcade connecting the projecting wings over- 

 looking the garden; another a massive square porte-cochere applied directly to the main wall; 

 the third with a hemicycle, again in two stories, enclosed with a flat roofed porch below, with 

 loggias on either side but each obviously belongs to the same building, each is so admirable 

 in itself as to seem but a finer expression of the gracious style which has been so well 

 employed in this fine design. 



The stately and somewhat sober exterior of "The Breakers" hardly prepares one for 

 the magnificent interior, which is truly gorgeous and most sumptuous in its dimensions and 

 adornment. The great hall, which rises to the full height of two stories, sets the keynote 

 of the whole dwelling. It is finished throughout in white marble and onyx. It is square in 

 plan, with large pilasters dividing each wall into three great bays, which contain rounded arches 

 and doorways below, with rectangular openings, divided by central columns and piers, above, 

 and with handsome bronze railings which take an important place in the color scheme of the 



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