Bellevue Avenue Walking Tour: Newport's Gilded Age Mansions on Foot

"Built in 1880 by architect Stanford White of McKim, Mead & White, the Casino was commissioned by newspaper publisher James Gordon Bennett Jr. after a bet went wrong: Bennett dared a friend to ride a horse into the exclusive Newport Reading Room, and when the man was expelled, Bennett built his own club to spite them. The shingle-style building with its distinctive latticework became the birthplace of the U.S. National Lawn Tennis Championships in 1881, the tournament that eventually moved to Forest Hills and became the U.S. Open. It now houses the International Tennis Hall of Fame."

The Hall of Fame museum costs $15 for adults and is worth 20 minutes if you care about tennis history at all — grass courts still in use out back are visible from the walkway even if you skip the ticket. Note the horseshoe piazza and the wraparound porches before heading east on Bellevue Avenue.

"This stretch of Bellevue Avenue was laid out in the 1850s as Newport shifted from a colonial port town to a summer resort for wealthy Southerners, then after the Civil War for New York and Boston industrial money. By the 1890s, Town & Country and other society papers tracked which families had houses here the way stock reports track share prices. The street's zoning and the sheer cost of building here kept out anyone without serious capital, which was the entire point."

Walk the shaded side going east — the trees here are original plantings from the 1870s and 80s. Look for smaller Stick-style and Queen Anne houses tucked between the mansions; these belonged to the merely rich, not the ultra-rich, and give a sense of scale before the big estates start.

"Completed in 1901 for coal magnate Edward Julius Berwind, The Elms was designed by architect Horace Trumbauer and modeled directly on the mid-18th-century Château d'Asnières outside Paris. Berwind made his fortune supplying coal to the U.S. Navy and merchant marine, and spent roughly $1.4 million building a house meant to look effortlessly old — ironic given it was one of the first houses in Newport wired for electricity from the start. The servants' quarters and coal-fired systems that ran the place are shown on the below-stairs tour, a rarer look at how these houses actually operated."

General admission runs about $18, with a below-stairs tour add-on worth the extra $10 if you're interested in how 40 servants ran a house like this. The formal sunken gardens on the east side are visible free from the sidewalk if you're skipping the ticket.

"Cornelius Vanderbilt II, president of the New York Central Railroad, hired architect Richard Morris Hunt to build The Breakers after an earlier wooden house on the site burned down in 1892. Completed in 1895 at a cost of roughly $7 million (well over $200 million today), the 70-room Italian Renaissance–style palazzo was built almost entirely of fireproof materials as a direct response to that earlier loss. The great hall rises 50 feet with a ceiling painted to resemble the sky, and the house used its own water-pumping station and boilers imported from the Vanderbilt-owned New York Central shops."

This is the flagship property and the one worth paying for if you only do one interior — general admission is about $29, or buy the Preservation Society's five-house combo ticket if you're planning to see Marble House and Rosecliff too, since it saves real money. Go right at opening (10am) in September to beat tour groups; by midday the great hall gets crowded fast.

"Richard Morris Hunt designed Marble House for William K. Vanderbilt and his wife Alva, completed in 1892 using an estimated 500,000 cubic feet of marble and costing around $11 million, most of that on materials alone. Alva Vanderbilt used the house's ballroom in 1895 to host the wedding reception for her daughter Consuelo's marriage to the Duke of Marlborough, a match widely reported at the time as a trade of American money for a British title. After divorcing Vanderbilt, Alva became a prominent suffragist and hosted rallies on the property's lawn in 1909, adding the Chinese Tea House on the cliffside for the events."

The Gothic Room and the gold ballroom are the standout interiors — don't rush past the dining room chairs, which were bolted to the floor so footmen could move them without guests lifting a finger. This is a shorter visit than The Breakers, so budget accordingly if you're doing both in one day.

"Built in 1902 for Nevada silver heiress Theresa Fair Oelrichs, Rosecliff was designed by Stanford White and modeled on the Grand Trianon at Versailles, with a heart-shaped double staircase as its centerpiece. Oelrichs used the house for lavish entertaining, including a 1904 party with a magician performing at a dinner where the walls were reportedly lined with hydrangeas. The house's H-shaped plan and white glazed terra-cotta exterior make it lighter and more theatrical than its neighbors, and it's appeared as a filming location for The Great Gatsby (1974) and True Lies (1994)."

Smaller than The Breakers or Marble House and a quicker visit, roughly 25 minutes covers the ground floor. If budget or time is tight, this is the one to skip in favor of the exterior view from the Cliff Walk instead.

"The Cliff Walk is a public right-of-way along Newport's eastern shoreline, its access legally protected since a series of 19th-century court disputes between mansion owners and the town over public passage. The full path runs 3.5 miles from Memorial Boulevard to Bailey's Beach, but the section behind Rosecliff, Marble House, and The Breakers gives the best view of the mansions from the ocean side, the angle their original owners actually designed the facades for. Rough surf and erosion have closed sections of the walk periodically since a 2010 storm damaged parts near Ochre Point."

Access the walk from the path beside The Breakers' parking lot or from Ledge Road near Rosecliff. Stick to the paved sections; the rocky scramble section past Marble House is passable but slow, and skippable if you'd rather just see the mansion backs from a bench near The Breakers.

"The Mooring sits on Sayer's Wharf overlooking Newport Harbor, in a building that once served as the headquarters of the New York Yacht Club during the America's Cup era when Newport hosted the race from 1930 to 1983. The harbor you're looking at from the deck is the same water where 12-meter class yachts prepped for Cup defenses through the mid-20th century. It's known locally for clam chowder and a raw bar, standard fare for a working harbor restaurant that's been serving sailors and tourists alike for decades."

Walk or cab back downtown to Sayer's Wharf, off America's Cup Avenue — it's a 15–20 minute walk from Bellevue Avenue back to the harbor. Get a table on the outdoor deck if the weather holds; lunch here runs $18–35 per entree, and it's busiest at sunset, so an early dinner around 5pm avoids the wait.