Blithewold is a 33-acre seaside garden estate that once the Bristol, Rhode Island summer home of Augustus and Bessie Van Wickle.

The Green Animals Topiary Garden property, overlooking Narragansett Bay in Portsmouth, Rhode Island was purchased in 1872 by Thomas Brayton, Treasurer of the Union Cotton Manufacturing Company in Fall River, Massachusetts.

William K. Vanderbilt chose architect Richard Morris Hunt to design the 39th birthday present he wanted to give to his wife, Alva. It would be call Marble House and was to be built on Newport’s fashionable Bellevue Avenue. Richard Morris Hunt was the first American educated at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris.

Rosecliff was commissioned by Nevada silver heiress Theresa “Tessie” Fair Oelrichs and her husband, Hermann, and was built between 1898 and 1902. Flamboyant architect, Sanford White of McKim, Mead & White, designed the house modeled after the Grand Trianon, the garden retreat at Versailles. The mansion is clad in white terracotta adorned with flowers and musical instruments. Jules Allard and Sons of Paris were commissioned to do the interior decoration.

The Breakers is the grandest of Newport’s summer “cottages” and a symbol of the Vanderbilt family’s social and financial pre-eminence in turn-of-the-century America. The mansion was built for Cornelius Vanderbilt II and his wife Alice, on 13 acres, and is named after the waves that crash at the base of the cliffs. The Italian Renaissance-style mansion replaced a smaller home on the site that was completely destroyed by fire in 1892. Architect Richard Morris Hunt was commissioned to design the house modeled after the 16th century palaces and villas of Genoa. The lavish interiors in the 70-room mansion were the work of Jules Allard & Sons of Paris and Ogden Codman, Jr.

The Elms was the summer residence of Mr. and Mrs. Edward Julius Berwind. In 1898, the Berwin’s engaged Philadelphia architect Horace Trumbauer to design a house modeled after an 18th century French chateau. The mansion was completed in 1901, with interior furnishings designed by Jules Allard and Sons of Paris. Mrs. Berwind died in 1922, and Mr. Berwind invited his sister, Julia, to become his hostess at his Newport house. Mr. Berwind died in 1936 and Julia continued to summer at the house until her death in 1961.

Newport is a beautiful city and worth a visit no matter what time of the year. Located on the southern end of Aquidneck Island, it has a historic district that includes an extensive and well-preserved variety of intact colonial buildings dating back to the early and mid-18th century. Some of these homes still stand the way they were 250 years ago, but many were restored in the late 20th century through grants made by Newport resident Doris Duke and the Newport Restoration Foundation.