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On October 12, 2017 Jim & Diane headed north to visit Newport, RI. We had passed through Newport on our Honeymoon 47 years ago but never really saw much of the city, it's coastline or Mansions.

Pictured in background is Cliff Walk, a 3.5 mile public walk, some on private property, on the Eastern coast of Newport, RI.

One of the biggest attractions in Newport are it's Mansions, which were built in the late 1800's or early 1900's. They were built as a summer get away for the high society of New York but it wasn't long after they were built and the dawn of income tax that they became too expensive to be maintained. These mansions were only used 7 or 8 weeks of the year but because of the harsh winters had the be heated in the winter months to preserve the buildings and the paintings and artifacts contained in them. Twelve of them are owned by the Preservation Society of Newport County and they are open for tours at a reasonable price.

The Breakers is probably the largest and most popular of the mansions. It has over 62,000 square foot on 5 floors and was owned by Cornelius Vanderbuilt II. It is pictured below.

The next Mansion was Rosecliff built by Theresa Oelrichs and contains the largest ballroom(40' X 80') in Newport. One winter the heat was turned off and several pipes broke. The large staircase below looked like a frozen waterfall and the ballroom was covered with several inches of ice.

Next was the Marble House owned by Alva & William Vanderbilt. The 50 room mansion took 35 staff to operate and got it's name from the 500,000 cubic feet of marble there..

Next up was the Elms, built by the coal baron Edward Berwin. The mansion was filled with great art works and even though Edward made his money in coal he didn't want people to see the coal being delivered to the home so he build a tunnel built from the boiler room to the side street outside the property wall. The coal was brought in in little coal cars on railroad tracks.