Marble House was built between 1888 and 1892 for William K. and Alva Vanderbilt. The Beaux Arts residence cost about eleven million dollars, with roughly seven million spent on five hundred thousand cubic feet of marble. Presented to Alva for her thirty ninth birthday, it reset the bar for Gilded Age display and helped transform Newport into a resort of stone palaces.
The Gold Ballroom (Grand Salon)
Often called the Gold Ballroom or Gold Room, this reception room shimmers with twenty two carat gold leaf applied over carved wood panels modeled on Versailles and the Louvre. Green silk cut velvet and mythological scenes complete a deliberate evocation of French court splendor, making the space the mansion’s most theatrical statement.
The Gothic Room
Alva Vanderbilt created the Gothic Room to showcase her Medieval and Renaissance decorative arts, much of it acquired from Paris dealer Émile Gavet. A stone fireplace copied by Jules Allard & Sons from one in the fifteenth century Jacques Cœur House in Bourges anchors the space. The collection once numbered in the hundreds before being sold in 1926.
The Chinese Tea House
Set at the cliff edge and built between 1912 and 1914 by Hunt and Hunt, the Chinese Tea House overlooks the Cliff Walk and Narragansett Bay. Alva used it for social events, including women’s suffrage gatherings after she reopened Marble House to the public. Its placement ties the estate’s European interiors to an outdoor pavilion inspired by East Asian design.
Longing for a trip to Newport? Check out hotel availability here!
The Dining Room
The dining room gleams with pink Numidian marble from Algeria, rising floor to cornice. Gilt bronze capitals and trophies punctuate the walls, while the fireplace reproduces the mantel in the Salon d’Hercule at Versailles. An eighteenth century French ceiling painting adds another Old World layer to a room designed for spectacle as much as for meals.
The Library
Used as both morning room and library, this Rococo styled space trades marble for carved walnut and intimate scale. Doors and bookcases executed by Allard’s Paris ateliers and cabinetmaker Gilbert Cuel wrap the room in warm woodwork. The shift in materials offers respite from the mansion’s stone surfaces while still signaling erudition and luxury.
Mrs. Vanderbilt’s Bedroom
Alva’s second floor bedroom adopts a Louis XIV aesthetic. Above the bed hangs a circular painting of Athena by Giovanni Antonio Pellegrini, dated around 1721 and brought from Venice’s Palazzo Pisani Moretta. The result is a private retreat that mirrors the public rooms in its devotion to European art and historic references.
The Stair Hall and Grand Staircase
This two story hall is clad in yellow Siena marble and dominated by a broad staircase with wrought iron and gilt bronze railings modeled on Versailles precedents. An eighteenth century Venetian ceiling painting of gods and goddesses crowns the space, turning a circulation zone into a ceremonial gallery of stone, metal, and myth.
These seven views reveal how Marble House stages grandeur in every direction. From gold leaf to pink marble, from imported fireplaces to stained canvases centuries old, the Vanderbilts and architect Richard Morris Hunt crafted a home where each room performs a different chapter in a single story of ambition and taste.
