About The Preservation Society of Newport County
The Preservation Society of Newport County was formed in 1945 by a group of residents led by Katherine and George Warren to save Hunter House, a Georgian merchant's home of 1748-1754 on the Newport waterfront, from demolition. The group first called itself the Georgian Society, then took its present name as its ambitions widened. Today it is Rhode Island's largest cultural organization, a private nonprofit accredited by the American Alliance of Museums, and the steward of 11 historic properties and landscapes, seven of them National Historic Landmarks, that together trace American architecture from the Colonial era to the Gilded Age.
The houses, known collectively as the Newport Mansions, include the summer "cottages" that made Bellevue Avenue famous: The Breakers (1895), Richard Morris Hunt's Italian Renaissance palace for the Vanderbilts; Marble House (1892), also by Hunt; The Elms (1901) by Horace Trumbauer; and Rosecliff (1902) by McKim, Mead and White. Earlier and quieter properties round out the story: Kingscote (1839), a Gothic Revival villa by Richard Upjohn; Chateau-sur-Mer (1852), remodeled in the 1870s; Chepstow (1860); the Isaac Bell House (1883), a landmark of the Shingle style by McKim, Mead and White; Hunter House itself; The Breakers Stable and Carriage House; and Green Animals Topiary Garden in Portsmouth, a country estate of about 1860 famous for its sculpted hedges.
The Society's headquarters at 424 Bellevue Avenue is itself a Gilded Age house, a three-story Romanesque Revival residence built in 1888 for New Yorker William H. Osgood and later owned by diplomat Herbert Claiborne Pell; the Society bought and restored it in 1992. A $1.25 million bequest from Gertrude Conaway Vanderbilt in 1978 helped underwrite the organization's growth. Beyond preservation, the Society mounts exhibitions and research programs on the people who built and staffed the houses, including Newport's history of slavery, and its interpretation acknowledges the Narragansett and Wampanoag homelands on which the estates stand.
Collections and Research Services
The Society's collections are the furnished interiors, decorative arts, and landscapes of the houses themselves, and its website does not advertise a public research library or archive reading room. Anyone researching a family member who worked in service at a Newport estate, or the provenance of a building on Bellevue Avenue, should contact the Society through its general line or info@newportmansions.org to ask about curatorial assistance, and should expect to supplement that with city and county records. Our guides to dating a house and finding old photos of a house or neighborhood cover the public sources that usually fill the gaps.
Planning Your Visit
Hours vary by property and by season, with the major houses open daily in peak months and a reduced schedule the rest of the year; check the current operating calendar before you drive in. Adult tickets range from $25 to $57 depending on how many houses are included, youth tickets (ages 6-12) from $10 to $18, and children under 5 are free; an annual Access Pass is $75 and individual memberships start at $115. Parking is free on site at every property except Hunter House and The Breakers Stable and Carriage House, which rely on street parking. Each house has its own accessibility notes on the website, and the Society takes part in the Museums for All program. Headquarters are at 424 Bellevue Avenue, Newport, RI 02840; phone (401) 847-1000. Tickets, hours, and event listings such as the Newport Flower Show are at newportmansions.org.
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