The Breakers

Cornelius Vanderbilt II bought a wooden summer house called The Breakers in 1885. In November 1892 a kitchen fire burned it to embers — and Vanderbilt responded the only way a Gilded Age railroad magnate could: he hired Richard Morris Hunt to build a replacement that could not burn. Raised between 1893 and 1895 from steel trusses, brick, and Indiana limestone, with no wooden structural parts and boilers buried safely under the front lawn, it was a fortress dressed as a palazzo.

Inside, the fireproofing gives way to pure theatre: a 50-foot Great Hall, imported Italian and African marbles, rare woods and mosaics from around the world, entire rooms bought from French châteaux and reassembled, a music room built in Paris by Allard & Sons and shipped across the Atlantic, Baccarat crystal chandeliers, and platinum-leaf relief panels in the Morning Room. Seventy rooms across five floors on a 13-acre clifftop estate — the word 'cottage' was the era's straight-faced joke.

The house cost more than $7 million in 1895 money. Vanderbilt's daughter opened it to the Preservation Society of Newport County in 1948, which bought it in 1972; designated a National Historic Landmark in 1994 and open year-round, it remains the undisputed king of the Newport mansions — the third floor, the family's private quarters, opened to visitors for the first time in 2024.