Back in the Gilded Age, Newport was the hub of the summer social season for the rich and famous. People like the Vanderbilts and the Astors built some magnificent mansions which are now open to the public. Join us as we take a tour.
I love this video and use it every year in my US History class to introduce my students to some of the grandeur of the Gilded Age. Please don't ever take it down 🙂
In Downton Abbey Martha Levinson says she has a cottage in Newport. I think these cottages would compete quite successfully with Downton. Even Carson might be impressed.
A good book to find out what life was really like back then is FORTUNE'S CHILDREN: THE FALL OF THE HOUSE OF VANDERBILT. Some amazing stories of a different age!
She mentions some of the Colonial homes which date back to the "16th and 17th centuries." I think she means 1600's and 1700's. "16th century" would be 1500's, well before the 1620 settling of Plymouth Colony.
Newport was first settled in 1639. It is less than 60 miles from Plymouth, MA which was founded by the Pilgrims in 1620. Newport was an important commercial port and was in 1750 the fourth most populous settlement in the 13 colonies. The city experienced a decline during the two wars with Great Britain as it was occupied by British troops which resulted in many residents fleeing. It to this day still has many colonial era structures and in around its center by its port. Its weathly enclave of summer homes along Bellevue Avenue came during the mid to late 1800's. These continued to be used by America's elite well into the 1920's. The introduction of new federal taxes and stock market crash of 1929 eventually forced many to abandon these mansions due to the enormous costs of upkeep and inheritance taxes.
Actually, Doris Duke and her ' Newport Restoration Foundation " saved many, many Colonial era homes. The Newport Preservation Society was and is about the Mansions and grinding out a tourist buck.
The interesting thing is much of the furnishings in some of these homes were stolen from the plantations of the South during and after the Civil War. The tour guide noted that one of the mansions was later purchased by a New Orleans attorney who retrieved his family furniture that was stolen.
In the late 60's and very early 70's I would watch the TV series "Dark Shadows" and when Collinwood Manor was shown the house used was one of the Newport mansions. I think the house is called Seacliff Manor or something close to that. The house was used as a school the was even used for filming a pornographic movie. A number of years ago I heard that some restoration work was being done on the mansion. Do any other viewers know what the latest is on this beautiful house and if it is open to the public?
First snapshots are Doris Duke place, I think, her more delicious property is Shangri-la in Hawaii and the guys who built the breakers+marble house got around 50 million each in the will in1888 not much to do with the CEO job, Alice Vanderbilt was furious with the size of the breakers but it had to be for entertaining large numbers of people
Its A shame that houses like these that were bulldozed or torn down, that had some great architecture n design., that nothing was saved. N it happened to great houses like these all over the USA. Converted to a shopping mall or apartments. 😔😞
Noo! The Newport police are not like that. Maybe you had a bad experience with one of the few. I am from Puerto Rico and when my relatives and friends come to visit RI I always take them to Newport, and never had any problems with the police
Joe Acevedo ~ You're deluded. The Newport police are some of the most evil police in the entire country. Believe me I know. I have had first-hand experience with them. They are evil.
Well, they are habitable, a lack of modern conveniences does not automatically render a building uninhabitable. That said, I'm pretty sure that the Newport houses were advanced for the time.
Well especially England (but also the rest of Europe), families still live in homes much larger and older than these. For example even medieval castles, that are generally between 800-1000 years old, and are fine to live in - so I’m sure these houses (built around 1900) are inhabitable.
I look at these cottages and am always reminded of all the kids forced to work in the owners textile mills,starving,horrific workplace accidents,poor wages,long work days.all those lives lost so the owners could spend 1 month out of 12 there
I can't even fathom the kind of money it would take to build these "cottages" and maintain them. While these summer homes are beautiful there's also something obscene about this display of wealth... like they were trying way too hard to outdo one another.
HowStuffWorks is the wrong name for this channel. I was expecting to see the secret passages or how the staff kept the home functioning, not a list of things to do while in Newport.
Really annoying the way you were laughing throughout the whole thing...about the “cottages”....the “viewing public”...”the shortage of servants”... Just let people enjoy the beauty without your judgements....and making fun of the owners, Newport society and that life..
Well, it maybe was the land of the free, but with the endless regulations and beaurocracy on everything, taxes and militarized law enforcement, it's no longer the land of the free!
You’re wrong. My family never owned slaves. My gr-gr grandfather built his empire by creating a business where there was a demand. The United States is the only country where a poor immigrant could become a millionaire through hard work.
Have ever heard of the Ashanti tribe from Ghanda?The story of a man from N.Y. state who owned bought a slave for himself and he was a black man. A childhood family moved to a big house bulit in 1864 and the man that built would help slaves hide in the house and he was a white. man.There is slavery of some kind around the world still...Whites were enslaved too...I have a beautiful biracial family and I found out I have a small percentage of African blood from ancestors that were Moors...Yes it was horrible but we should stop blaming a whole race a lot didnt own a slave ever and werent even here yet.
Yes I agree, they are basically “copies” of older European styles. When you directly copy a style of architecture (especially from an earlier age/ different country), it instantly becomes a pastiche - not always a bad thing; but extremely hard to get right. This is of course not only limited to the US, Europe also has many examples: one that comes to mind for me being “The Royal Pavillion, Brighton” (built 1787-1823); a brash combination of different Asian architectural styles! These buildings in Newport are very similar, though not quite as tacky, due to the fact they are “poorer” quality imitations. *Note: they are not of “poor” quality, but it would be impossible for these houses (built around 1900), to be of the same quality as a house/ palace expertly crafted in the 1600’s-1700’s. However, most architectural styles are in some way inspired by those that came before. Take the Renaissance for instance; the classical architecture was directly inspired by ancient Roman and Greek buildings, but the key difference here is that it was just that an “inspiration” - not a direct “reproduction”. So buildings possessed “elements” of ancient architecture: columns, symmetry, entablature etc - that were then utilised in a different way. For example structurally important aspects of Roman architecture e.g columns, were often used as decoration; like those at Castle Howard (built 1699-1799) - showing “reinterpretation.” These buildings had an architectural style of their own and from this came many other styles, like Baroque (Castle Howard is actually English Baroque). If they had tried to construct buildings “exactly” like their predecessors, ultimately they could never attain the same quality as an original 2000 years ago. I hope this makes sense. I am simply trying to explain the reasoning behind “why” buildings like this can be referred to as “tacky” - yet this doesn’t mean they cannot still be beautiful! I do not write this with any malice, as I love the US, a country that has has incredible architecture in its own right.
