Visiting The Breakers in 2006: The Former Mansion of The Vanderbilt Family, One of America’s 19th-Century Dynasties (38 Images)
~Saturday, August 6, 2022 Blog Post~
Sometime in January 2006, my family and I visited The Breakers. This sprawling former luxury residential property is among the majestic houses of the Newport Mansions group, located along Bellevue Avenue in Newport, Rhode Island.
The Breakers’ exact address is 44 Ochre Point Avenue, Newport, Rhode Island, United States of America.
You may not be familiar with The Breakers, but this Gilded Age mansion used to be the home of the Vanderbilts, who were among the influential families behind America’s industrialization in the 1800s.
Cornelius Vanderbilt II was among the wealthy Vanderbilt family’s prominent members and the Newport mansion was his summer residence.
The Vanderbilts were one of New York’s wealthiest clans. Moreover, they were the former owner of the Grand Central Terminal located in Midtown Manhattan.
You can see I have a photo of myself in front of the Grand Central Terminal’s Vanderbilt Hall, which was named after the affluent Vanderbilt family that built and owned the station.
I also found some interesting information about Vanderbilt patriarch Cornelius Vanderbilt in this 2016 article published in Dnainfo.com:
“By the end of Cornelius Vanderbilt’s life, he was the richest man in New York City and he’d ultimately earn the distinction of the second richest American ever.
That’s according to CNNMoney’s calculations, which adjusted his fortune of more than US$100 million for the size of the economy at the time of his death in 1877, pegging it at US$205 billion in today’s dollars.”
The Breakers, which was built between 1893 and 1895, is no longer considered as the home of any of the Vanderbilts’ descendants, including media personality Anderson Cooper and his late mother, fashion designer Gloria Vanderbilt (who shares the same birthday as myself — February 20).
At the time of writing this blog post, it is under the stewardship of the Preservation Society of Newport County.
I remember when we visited The Breakers’ second floor, I encountered a strange, fragrant scent and asked the old lady who was our guide, “What’s that smell?” She told me, “It must be the lilies.”
The Breakers is close to the lengthy Newport Cliff Walk, which is another tourist attraction in Newport, Rhode Island. The Newport Cliff Walk is a 3.5-mile public access walkway bordering the shore line.
The Breakers overlooks Easton Bay of the Atlantic Ocean. We were told by our guide that during the Vanderbilts’ time in that mansion, they boarded boats or steamships. From their trip to Europe, they landed in that area, which is merely a stone’s throw from their The Breakers home.
Based on Newportmansions.org’s section about Hunter House, “The great mercantile families lived patrician lives, building harbor-front mansions overlooking their trading ships, and entertained in grand style.”
Additionally, we went to The Breakers’ old kitchen, and our guide informed us that the Vanderbilts were worried about a possible conflagration happening in their home.
Therefore, we learned from our guide that there’s this mechanism in the The Breakers’ kitchen applied. I’ll try to recall it.
At the time of writing this blog post, The Breakers serves as a museum. Moreover, it is open for visits all year.
In this era, I don’t think living in a mansion as expansive as The Breakers is practical. Additionally, I think such a monumental house is very expensive and very arduous to maintain, similar to Highclere Castle.
According to a May 2013 New York Times article about the latter, which is the location site of British historical drama television series “Downton Abbey,” “Even now, these cash-flow problems have not ended for Lady Carnarvon and her husband (Highclere Castle’s present owners). A 2009 article in The Daily Mail shows Lord Carnarvon posing in rooms covered in mold that required US$18 million in repairs.”
I would love to visit The Breakers again, as well as the neighboring mansions like Marble House, The Elms, Rosecliff, the Chateau-sur-Mer, Kingscote, Chepstow, and Hunter House.
Additionally, Newport, Rhode Island is among the best cities for me. I love The Red Parrot Restaurant, Awful Awful/Newport Creamery, the shops at Coddington Highway, The JPT Film & Event Center (where my older sister and I watched psychological thriller movie “Black Swan” starring Natalie Portman and Vincent Cassel in autumn 2010), and so many others.
I included below seven images of some Newport Mansions and The Breakers merchandise we purchased as souvenirs like the refrigerator sticker. We bought some of them fairly recently, such as the wallet.
I have a separate blog post about Newport, Rhode Island, which contains some family pictures. I think this Rhode Island city is relatively peaceful and highly cultural, and I would love to retire there eventually, perhaps somewhere near Bellevue Avenue. Haha.
