Biltmore, the opulent 250-room French Renaissance chateau, nestled in North Carolina’s Blue Ridge Mountains, was the vision of George Washington Vanderbilt, carried out by renowned architect Richard Morris Hunt. Construction began in 1889 and the opulent estate, with grounds designed by Frederick Law Olmsted, was opened on Christmas Eve in 1895 to family and friends.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art was opened in 1870 and boasts 36,000 objects, including 2,500 European Old Masters, Impressionist, and Pos-Impressionist paintings as well as the greatest collection of Egyptian art and artifacts outside Cairo.

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.

Belcourt was a bachelor pad built for horse enthusiast Oliver Hazard Perry Belmont, with French and Gothic influences, designed by renowned Beaux Arts architect Richard Morris Hunt. The 44,000 square foot house was built with one bedroom and one bathroom and extensive stables and carriage area incorporated into the house’s ground level design.

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.

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.