The Breakers
Richard Morris Hunt's Italian Renaissance villa of 1895, built for Cornelius Vanderbilt II.
The Breakers was built between 1893 and 1895 for Cornelius Vanderbilt II, president of the New York Central Railroad, after fire destroyed an earlier wooden house on the site. Richard Morris Hunt modelled the seventy-room summer residence on sixteenth-century genoese and Tuscan palaces, facing brick with Indiana limestone and grouping the rooms around a great hall that rises some fourteen metres to a ceiling painted as open sky. Steel framing and a boiler room set well away from the house were used to reduce fire risk.
Interiors were fitted out by Jules Allard and Sons of Paris and by Ogden Codman Jr, in marble, alabaster, gilt and rare woods, several rooms having been made in France and shipped for assembly. Set on a thirteen-acre plot above the Cliff Walk, the house has been open to the public since 1948 under the Preservation Society of Newport County, which bought it outright in 1972. It is a National Historic Landmark and part of the Bellevue Avenue Historic District.
Highlights
- Two-storey Great Hall with a sky-painted ceiling
- Morning Room panels made in France and shipped for assembly
- Ocean-facing loggia and grounds above the Cliff Walk
- 'Beneath The Breakers' tour of the boiler room and service tunnel
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