March, 1906 
AMERICAN HOMES AND GARDENS I 
wa 
7 
Notable American Homes 
By Barr Ferree 
Photographs by Almann and Company 
“Rosecliff,” the House of Mrs. Hermann Oelrichs, Newport, Rhode Island 
HERE is so much of splendid architecture in 
the newer homes of Newport that it is un- 
fair to one and to all, to the critic and to 
the observer, to signalize any particular 
dwelling as the utmost expression of the 
builder’s art in our summer capital. Nor 
could the discerning critic find safety to himself in so doing, 
since the architectural achievements at Newport have 
crowded each other so closely in point of time that what 
might seem the most notable to-day might, in a few months, 
be relegated to a secondary rank by some newer grandeur. 
There are, of course, many ways in which Newport has 
States. Its people and their doings have attracted an im- 
mense amount of attention, so that comparatively unim- 
portant episodes are familiar to hundreds of thousands of 
persons who have never set foot in Bellevue Avenue and 
perhaps never hope to do so. 
One need scarcely be told, therefore, that the Newport 
‘“cottage”’ is a building apart from all other residential struc- 
tures, and it need hardly be explained why “palaces” seem so 
peculiarly in place there. But it is impossible to understand 
any considerable building without some idea of the condi- 
tions which brought it into being or the needs, ends, pur- 
poses or circumstances to which it is adapted. 
The Sea Front 
found distinction, but in no way has its visible supremacy 
been more completely realized than in its dwellings. Col- 
loquially termed “‘cottages” they represent everything that a 
cottage is not, and the newer terms of “‘villa’’ and ‘‘mansion”’ 
fit them, on the whole, more appositely; while the word 
“palace,” did we dare to use it in this democratic America, 
would, in numerous instances, be the most appropriate of all. 
If the designation ‘palace’? has ever been justified in 
America it is at Newport. The doings of this gay city have 
long been public property. It vies with New York and 
Washington, in being the most interesting town in the United 
The Newport palace, it is then well to note, is justified by 
the gay life for which it is at once a background and a 
setting. Obviously, if our rich people would be gay—and 
who would have them otherwise—they must have an en- 
vironment suited to their means and to the special kind of 
life they desire to live. If dinners and parties, receptions and 
balls, fétes of all kinds—the fashionable names for the most 
fashionable functions change so rapidly that the chronicler 
must keep close in touch to know the word to use and when 
to use it—if these diversions are an essential part of a sum- 
mer’s pleasurings, then, truly, a suitable setting must be pro- 
