Coastal Adventure # 9: The Ultimate Cottage Life Show

Our next stop was in Newport, Rhode Island.  This was another summer getaway of the very rich and famous.  Unlike Bar Harbor, though, the very rich and famous didn’t come here to get away from it all.  They came here and brought it all with them.  I’ve no doubt that many of the summer homes in Newport rivalled or even exceeded in scale their owners’ winter homes in New York (or wherever else).  Certainly, the Newport “season” was just as excessive as the city “season” for daytime calls, teas, dinners, evening parties, suppers, and debutante balls.  So the biggest single sight-seeing attraction in Newport is the chance for us ninety-nine percenters to visit one or more of these mansions and see how one-tenth of the other one percent lived.

And that’s a pity, because the older portions of Newport contain many beautiful gems of colonial architecture and much history.  In many ways, this is as ideal a town to explore on foot as Quebec or Bar Harbor.

So I explored on foot first.  I didn’t have time to get right down into the old harbour district, which contains many of the historic buildings – and many of the quirky boutiques and restaurants.  But I did poke around the district behind the marina, which includes significant public buildings from back in the day, and some lovely old colonial houses as well – many now serving as bed and breakfast inns.

After exploring that district, I joined my bus tour which took us along the rocky shores of Ocean Avenue and down Bellevue Avenue, the locations of ninety percent of the wealthy class summer homes. 

We then had a tour of The Elms, one of the numerous mansions preserved and kept up and (where necessary) restored by the Newport Preservation Trust, founded and significantly endowed by billionaire tobacco heiress Doris Duke.  It’s difficult to photograph many of the mansions on the tour bus fly-by, but I can assure you that in point of overall size The Elms is one of the more modest houses – although I’ve been reliably informed that its interior décor is second to none.  The point that really intrigued me in the recorded guided tour was the assertion that the house was designed primarily as a machine for entertaining; its function as a residence is more of a by-product.  The last picture of the kitchen range (sorry it's a bit blurry) clearly proves that point.