The Grand Newport Mansions That Inspired HBO’s “The Gilded Age”

In 1881, William Backhouse and Caroline Schermerhorn Astor completed Beachwood Cottage on Bellevue Avenue. (The name is a modern-day misnomer—far from a quaint structure, Beachwood had 39 rooms and a ballroom that could fit 400 people. Today, it is owned by Larry Ellison.) Not to be outdone, William K. and Alva Vanderbilt built Marble House between 1888 and 1892 on the same street. Made—as the name suggests—with 500,000 cubic feet of marble, it cost 11 million dollars to build at the time, a staggering amount. Yet, it was William K.’s brother, Cornelius, that built the most lavish abode: The Breakers, a 70-room Italian neo-Renaissance palazzo finished in 1895.

Thanks to meticulous historical preservation, many of the Gilded Age mansions in Newport remain standing—and even served as filming locations for the HBO show. “Interestingly Newport plays, in some cases, for Newport; but in many cases, the rooms are stand-ins for locations that were meant to be, or are scripted as New York City locations,” Lauri Pitkus, The Gilded Age’s location supervisor, explains to Vogue, since many of that era’s buildings in Manhattan were demolished.  The Breakers’ Music Room, for example, doubles as Mrs. Russell’s New York City ballroom. Meanwhile, the exterior of Chateau-su-Mare, once the home of the Wetmore family, was the stand in for the Rhode Island home of the fictional Mrs. Astor. Meanwhile, Newport’s Rosecliff acts as the grand New York home of the socially-shunned Mrs. Chamberlain. 

And, if you’re so inclined, many of these mansions are open to the public for ticketed tours. Maybe a Gilded Age-inspired trip to Newport is in order.