The Breakers stands on Ochre Point Avenue in Newport, Rhode Island, completed in 1895 as a summer residence for Cornelius Vanderbilt II, head of the New York Central Railroad and grandson of the family's shipping and rail fortune founder, to a design by the architect Richard Morris Hunt. Built in an Italian Renaissance palazzo style modeled loosely on sixteenth-century Genoese palaces, its 70-room interior includes extensive imported marble, gilded ceilings and a two-story great hall intended to rival the grandest European aristocratic residences, reflecting the scale of Gilded Age American industrial wealth. The mansion was designed with fireproof construction throughout, including a steel frame, after an earlier Vanderbilt summer house on a nearby site burned down, a lesson Hunt applied directly to the building's structural planning. The Preservation Society of Newport County has operated The Breakers as a house museum since leasing it from the Vanderbilt family in 1948, and it remains the largest and most visited of Newport's Gilded Age summer cottages.
Facts
Building Type
Building Type (category) Building Type (category) Building Type (category) Building TypeGilded Age summer mansion, house museum 2 LocationNewport, Rhode Island, United States 2 Completed Year Classification
Standing StatusSourced to the subject's own account Connections
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In Style
Source The Breakers (Wikipedia)
Uses Element
Source The Breakers (Wikipedia)
Source The Breakers (Wikipedia)
Source The Breakers (Wikipedia)
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1. The Breakers (Wikipedia)
Wikimedia FoundationLead section
The Breakers is a Gilded Age mansion located at 44 Ochre Point Avenue, Newport, Rhode Island, US.
In Style: Renaissance Revival architecture, Introduction
The 70-room mansion, with a gross area of 138,300 square feet (12,850 m2) and 62,482 square feet (5,804.8 m2) of living area on five floors, was designed by Richard Morris Hunt in the Renaissance Revival style; the interior decor was by Jules Allard and Sons and Ogden Codman Jr.
Uses Element: Masonry, Wikipedia article
Vanderbilt insisted that the building be made as fireproof as possible, resulting in a structure composed of masonry and steel trusses, with no wooden parts.
Uses Element: Steel, Wikipedia article
Vanderbilt insisted that the building be made as fireproof as possible, resulting in a structure composed of masonry and steel trusses, with no wooden parts.
Uses Element: Limestone, Materials
Foundation: brick, concrete, and limestone Trusses: steel Walls: Indiana limestone Roof: red terra cotta tile Wall panels: platinum leaf (eight reliefs of mythological figures only) Other: marble (plaques), wrought iron (gates and fences)
View the Source 2. The Breakers | Newport Mansions
Quick facts section
Built 1895
Visit and address section
44 Ochre Point Ave Newport, RI 02840
History overview paragraph
The Breakers is the grandest of Newport's summer "cottages"
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