The Breakers
The Breakers is a Gilded Age mansion located at 44 Ochre Point Avenue, Newport, Rhode Island, US. It was built between 1893 and 1895 as a summer residence for Cornelius Vanderbilt II, a member of the wealthy Vanderbilt family.
The 70-room mansion, with a gross area of and 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.
The Ochre Point Avenue entrance is marked by baroque forged wrought iron gates, and the walkway gates are part of a limestone-and-iron fence that borders the property on all but the ocean side. The footprint of the house covers approximately or 43,000 square feet of the estate on the cliffs overlooking Easton Bay of the Atlantic Ocean.
The house was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1971, and was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1994. It is also a contributing property to the Bellevue Avenue Historic District. The property is owned and operated by the Newport Preservation Society as a museum and is open for visits all year.
History and ownership
Construction and design
Cornelius Vanderbilt II purchased the grounds in 1885 for $450,000. The previous mansion on the property was owned by Pierre Lorillard IV; it burned on November 25, 1892, and Vanderbilt commissioned architect Richard Morris Hunt to rebuild it in splendor. 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. He even required that the boiler be located away from the house in an underground space below the front lawn.The designers created an interior using marble imported from Italy and Africa, and rare woods and mosaics from countries around the world. It also included architectural elements purchased from chateaux in France, such as the library mantel. Expansion was finally finished in 1892.
The Breakers is the architectural and social archetype of the "Gilded Age", a period when members of the Vanderbilt family were among the major industrialists of America. It was the largest, most opulent house in the Newport area upon its completion in 1895.
Alice Vanderbilt: 1899 - 1934
died from a cerebral hemorrhage caused by a stroke in 1899 at age 55. His will provided his widow Alice Gwynne Vanderbilt with a life interest in The Breakers, as well as the power to bequeath the property to whichever of their children she chose. During Alice's widowhood the costs of maintaining The Breakers rose substantially, with property taxes rising to $83,000 annually by the mid-1920s. The house required 33 indoor servants and 25 servants to run, and its boilers consumed over 150 tonnes of coal each year. Alice outlived Cornelius by 35 years and died at the age of 89 in 1934. She left The Breakers to her youngest daughter Countess Gladys Széchenyi, essentially because Gladys lacked American property; in addition, none of her other children were interested in the property, while Gladys had always loved the estate.Gladys Vanderbilt Széchenyi: 1934 - 1965
Although Gladys had also inherited approximately $3,500,000 in cash and stocks from her mother's estate, as well as $1,250,000 in cash and the income from a $5,000,000 Trust fund from her father's estate in 1899, in the months following Alice's death there was widespread speculation amongst the Newport elite that Gladys would not open the house, based on a commonly-held belief that she did not possess the financial resources required to maintain the house and the large staff required for its upkeep.In 1935 the Washington Herald reported that it was common knowledge in local circles that Gladys considered her mother's decision to bequeath The Breakers to her as more of a liability than a gift, and it was rumoured that an offer had been made to her by a business syndicate to purchase the property with the intention of transforming the house into a hotel. Gladys first resumed her occupancy of The Breakers after inheriting the property two years after her mother's death during the summer of 1936.
Wartime Use
The property was not occupied by Gladys and her family from 1939 to 1942; instead summers were spent at the Newport home of her elder sister Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney. Gladys offered the property to the Civilian Defense Council in 1942, after which it was temporarily known as "Newport No. 1 air raid shelter".The Breakers was the site of a major civilian air-raid drill in January 1943; over 500 air-raid wardens, auxiliary workers and other volunteers took part, using the house's extensive basements as part of the exercise. Countess Gladys Vanderbilt Széchenyi was present in her capacity as Red Cross Volunteer. The Breakers was reportedly the first air-raid shelter established in Newport during the Second World War.
Opened for public tours
It was announced on 10 June 1948 that the high-maintenance property would be leased to The Preservation Society of Newport County for $1 per year, with rooms on the ground floor to be opened for tours from 1 July 1948. The initial price of tours was $1.25 plus taxes per adult. Revenues from tours and ticket sales were paid to The Preservation Society, whilst Gladys continued to meet the cost of property taxes, insurance and major repairs. The cost of property taxes for 1964 was reportedly $16,046. The Preservation Society continued to operate The Breakers as a tourist attraction, whilst Gladys maintained a private apartment in the upper floors of the house until her death in 1965.Under the terms of Gladys' will, The Breakers was left in equal shares to her four surviving daughters, as well as the three children of her eldest daughter Cornelia, who had predeceased her mother in 1958. The will stipulated that the family had a year from the date of Gladys' death to determine if they wished to retain the property or disclaim it; if they chose to disclaim the property, it would pass into the ownership of the Preservation Society of Newport. If the Society in turn chose not to accept the bequest, the Breakers would then pass into the ownership of The United States National Trust for Historial Preservation.
Gladys' executors valued the property at $192,000, though the IRS later instigated legal action over the size of Gladys' estate in 1969, claiming that the value of the property when Gladys died should have been assessed at $250,000.
On 31 December 1965 the Newport Mercury and Weekly News announced that a spokesperson for The Preservation Society of Newport had confirmed that the family had reached an informal agreement for The Breakers to be opened to the public again during the summer of 1966, but that no permanent decision had yet been reached regarding the property's future. Following Gladys' death, The Preservation Society took over the payment of property taxes on the building.
The Preservation Society of Newport: 1972 - present
The Preservation Society of Newport purchased The Breakers on 28 December 1972 for $365,000 from Gladys's heirs. The family members who sold the property gifted much of its furniture and contents to The Preservation Society of Newport.At the time of the sale it was reported that over 1.5 million visitors had paid to tour The Breakers since it was first opened to the public in 1948, and that The Preservation Society of Newport then expended some $500,000 on wages, maintenance and upkeep of the property each year.
Under the sale agreement, Countess Sylvia Szapary, Gladys's daughter, was granted a life tenancy of her mother's modest private apartment on the third floor of the house. The apartment reportedly comprised more than half of the third floor on the southern side of the house, within a series of rooms initially used as the living quarters for the sons of Cornelius Vanderbilt II which was decorated by Ogden Codman Jr.. It reportedly contains eight bedrooms, a living room with ocean views, and a small kitchen converted from a former housekeeper's room. Access from the museum floors open to the public was said to initially have blocked with infant safety-gate on a staircase connecting the second and third storeys.
Following Sylvia Szapary's death in 1998, The Preservation Society agreed to allow the family to continue to live on the third floor, which is not open to the public. The-then President of the Board of The Preservation Society of Newport reportedly advised Sylvia's children in a letter penned in 1998 that "it will be helpful to us to be able to tell our visitors that the original owners’ great-grandchildren continue to live in the house."
By 2015, Syvlia's children Paul and Gladys Szapary were still summering at the Breakers; that year they and other Vanderbilt relatives publicly opposed the Society's plan for a visitor center on the 13-acre grounds, arguing it would compromise the site's character, while the Society said the facility would provide accessible ticketing and visitor amenities. Following the dispute, the Szapary's vacated the third floor of The Breakers in 2018, which was opened for public tours for the first time in 2024.
, it was the most-visited attraction in Rhode Island, with approximately 450,000 visitors annually.
Gardens
The pea-gravel driveway is lined with maturing pin oaks and red maples. The trees of The Breakers' grounds act as screens that increase the sense of distance between The Breakers and its Newport neighbors. Among the more unusual imported trees are two examples of the Blue Atlas Cedar, a native of North Africa. Clipped hedges of Japanese yew and Pfitzer juniper line the tree-shaded footpaths that meander about the grounds. Informal plantings of arbor vitae, taxus, Chinese juniper, and dwarf hemlock provide attractive foregrounds for the walls that enclose the formally landscaped terrace.The grounds also contain several varieties of other rare trees, copper and weeping beeches. Today's pattern for the south parterre garden was determined from old photographs and laid out in pink and white alyssum and blue ageratum. The wide borders paralleling the wrought iron fence are planted with rhododendrons, mountain laurel, dogwoods, and many other flowering shrubs that effectively screen the grounds from street traffic and give visitors a feeling of seclusion.