Astors'Beechwood Mansion

Northeast > Rhode Island > Newport > Astors'Beechwood Mansion

How to Get There

From downtown Newport: Head north on Thames Street, which intersects with Bellevue Avenue. Follow Bellevue Avenue northbound for approximately 1-2 miles. Beechwood Mansion is located on the left side of the street, part of the historic Bellevue Avenue mansion district.

Overview

Beechwood is a Gilded Age mansion in Newport best known for having been owned by the Astor family. Part of the Bellevue Avenue Historic District, it was built between 1852-53 and designed in the Italianate style by Andrew Jackson Downing and Calvert Vaux. Richard Morris Hunt renovated the estate in 1881 after it was bought the year before by William Backhouse Astor, Jr..

History

Beechwood was built as a marine villa for New Yorker Daniel Parish, a clothing merchant whose operations extended to Southern cities. Being a nephew of Thomas Powell, a steamboat magnate from Newburgh, New York, Parish commissioned the design from Andrew Jackson Downing and Calvert Vaux, whose office was based there. Downing's trip to visit the building site with Parish in July 1852 never occurred; he died in a steamboat accident before reaching New York. Vaux completed the house in 1853 with a "Palladian spirit" and published it in his book Villas and Cottages (1857). After a fire in 1855, it was rebuilt in 1856 based on the original plans, Vaux superintending the construction.

In 1880, Beechwood was purchased by William Backhouse Astor Jr. for $190,941.50. He had married Caroline Webster Schermerhorn, who would be known as "the Mrs. Astor". Between 1888 and 1890, Mrs. Astor hired architect Richard Morris Hunt to do many renovations, including the addition of a ballroom to fit the famous "Four Hundred". The house also boasts a library, a dining room and a music room with wallpaper imported from Paris. Beechwood became the showplace for many of Mrs. Astor's dinner parties.

When Mrs. Astor died in 1908, Beechwood was left to her son, John Jacob Astor IV, who married his second wife Madeleine in its ballroom in 1911. After John's death on the Titanic in 1912, it passed to his son Vincent (by his first wife, Ava). Vincent later rented out the home to Robert R. Young, a New York financier.

This article uses material from the Wikipedia article "Beechwood (Astor mansion)", which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike License 3.0