Newport’s grandest “summer cottage” was never meant to be subtle. Built for railroad heir Cornelius Vanderbilt II between 1893 and 1895, The Breakers fuses Italian Renaissance exuberance with American industrial might, packing 70 rooms of art, engineering, and very public bragging rights into a palatial perch above the Atlantic. Use the nine spaces below as your personal highlights reel—the stories behind them turn every snapshot into a miniature history lesson.
1 | The Great Hall
Richard Morris Hunt opened the house with a shock-and-awe statement: a limestone court that is literally a perfect 50 × 50 × 50 feet. Carved Caen-stone walls rise to a painted “sky” ceiling, while six pedimented doors wear Karl Bitter sculptures of Galileo, Dante, Apollo, Mercury, Hunt himself, and Bitter, a who’s-who of intellect and artistry. When the Vanderbilts welcomed 400 guests for Gertrude Vanderbilt’s debutante ball in 1895, electric lamps hidden behind a gilded cornice switched on at midnight, flooding the cube with cutting-edge illumination.
2 | The Dining Room
At 2,400 square feet, the dining room is larger than many entire Gilded Age houses. Twelve free-standing Corinthian columns of rosy Algerian alabaster support a massive gilded entablature, while a mural of Aurora heralds dawn across the barrel-vault. Two 1,500-pound Baccarat chandeliers hang from retractable winches and were wired for both gas and electricity, Cornelius would not risk a dinner party dimming if Newport’s power plant failed.
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3 | The Music Room
Oval in plan and pure French in pedigree, this room was fabricated in Paris by Jules Allard & Sons, disassembled, shipped, and re-erected in Newport like an enormous jigsaw puzzle. Silvered and gilded coffers reflect candlelight onto a French mahogany piano with ormolu mounts. The Vanderbilts hosted private recitals here; in 2022 HBO’s The Gilded Age filmed its own soirée on the exact parquet floor, proving the room’s star power endures.
4 | The Upper Loggia
Step through double doors on the second floor and the mansion suddenly breathes. The loggia was Hunt’s nod to seaside palaces of Genoa, an indoor-outdoor salon whose faux-marble walls open to Atlantic air and the lawn below. Summer breezes cooled family gatherings here, and the vantage point offered perfect surveillance of yachts cruising past Ochre Point.
5 | The Lower Loggia & South Terrace
Directly beneath the upper porch, a colonnaded arcade leads onto the broad terrace where the family took tea and surveyed regattas. Raphael Guastavino tiled the vaults in his fire-proof herringbone, while wicker furniture, Persian rugs, and potted palms once softened the limestone backdrop. The terrace steps flow into Ernest W. Bowditch’s “Great Lawn,” a green carpet unbroken to the cliff edge.
6 | The Main Gates (the postcard shot)
Even before visitors reach the porte-cochère, they pass between twin wrought-iron giants: 12 feet tall, 5,600 pounds each, forged in Paris in 1894. After 130 coastal winters, salt had gnawed the metal; in 2025 the Preservation Society craned the gates away for a $500,000 restoration—sand-blasting every scroll to bare iron, flame-spraying zinc, and recoating with marine-grade paint so the Vanderbilt acorns and oak leaves gleam like new.
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7 | The Grand Staircase
Curving balustrades of Breche Violette marble sweep upward to an 11 × 33-foot stained-glass skylight by John La Farge, salvaged from the Vanderbilts’ Fifth-Avenue townhouse. Family lore says the children turned silver serving trays into makeshift sleds, sliding from the second landing to the Great Hall floor while servants stood guard against parental discovery.
8 | The Second-Floor Gallery
Linking family suites, this walnut-panelled passage doubles as a private museum. Busts of Roman emperors, portraits by Raimundo de Madrazo, and a Burgundian fireplace carved circa 1550 line the route. Windows on the east frame lawn and ocean; west-facing openings gaze back to Newport Harbor, giving the corridor a constant play of light and sea color.
9 | The Ocean-Side Façade
Hunt’s exterior is Indiana limestone over a brick-and-steel skeleton, fireproof and storm-ready. The asymmetrical massing, tile roof, and paired loggias quote 16th-century Genoese palazzi admired by Hunt in Rubens’ Palazzi di Genova. From the lawn you grasp the scale: 138,000 square feet of floor area anchored to bedrock 70 feet above the surf. No wonder Newport locals still call it the city’s “crown jewel.”
From its sky-high Great Hall to the freshly restored gates, The Breakers compresses global craftsmanship and Vanderbilt ambition into one cliff-top estate. Pair each of these nine spaces with your own photographs, and you’ll give friends a scrollable tour of the Gilded Age’s boldest address. Click here to get tickets!
