Inside the holiday ‘cottages’ of America’s wealthiest tycoons
Lifestyles of the rich and infamously extravagant are laid bare in these summer hideaways from the Gilded Age.
Spanning the 1870s to early 20th century, America’s Gilded Age was a period of rapid industrialisation that created a super-rich elite. These high-society sorts built lavish holiday homes in places such as Rhode Island or on vast rural estates.
Many of these mansions are now popular tourism attractions, where visitors can see how the other half lived.
1 The Breakers – shipping and railroad family the Vanderbilts
The Gilded Age’s lavish lifestyles and social climbing inspired drama series The Gilded Age, which soon returns for a second season on Paramount+. Created by Julian Fellowes of Downton Abbey fame, the show is partly filmed on location in seaside Newport, where wealthy New Yorkers kept so-called summer “cottages”. Among them is The Breakers, a Renaissance Revival stunner completed in 1895 for Cornelius Vanderbilt II. The 70-room home is the state of Rhode Island’s most popular attraction, and the largest of the Preservation Society of Newport County’s nine houses; several stand in for a Manhattan mansion in The Gilded Age. From the 15m-high ceilings of the Great Hall to two loggias overlooking the Atlantic, The Breakers is an opulent mix of marble, gilding, mosaic, stained glass and rare woods with a touch of French chateau. Most furnishings are original. Tours include its once cutting-edge technology, including elevators and electricity.
2 The Mount – author Edith Wharton
Wealthy families commissioned eye-popping houses, and many of those not since felled by the wrecker’s ball have become tourist attractions. These include The Mount, author Edith Wharton’s 1902 home in Massachusetts’ bucolic Berkshires region. Her early life in Gilded Age New York inspired novels such as Pulitzer Prize-winner The Age of Innocence and The Buccaneers. A Bridgerton-influenced adaptation of this tale about American heiresses finding titled husbands in Britain dropped on Apple TV+ this week. Wharton’s first book was actually a work of nonfiction: The Decoration of Houses. She followed its principles of symmetry, proportion and uncluttered space to design The Mount, from the gardens to the mansion’s exterior, which was inspired by England’s 17th-century Belton House. The result is a property with more elegant restraint than many of the age. Four of Wharton’s dogs are buried here in a small pet cemetery, and the library’s books are from her own collection. The Mount offers tours and literary events, whose themes extend beyond its late owner.
3 The Elms – coal baron Edward Berwind
Another of Newport’s finest is The Elms, completed in 1901 for coal baron Edward Berwind who, like many of his nouveau riche peers, copied and imported Old World aristocracy trappings. It’s modelled on France’s Chateau d’Asnieres, while the recently restored gardens recall formal 18th-century French designs, complete with marble pavilions, fountains and sunken garden. Berwind also showed off his European treasures here, including Renaissance ceramics and 18th-century French and Venetian paintings. Most of the mansion’s contents were sold before the Preservation Society purchased the property, but art and antiques have since been acquired to bring The Elms back to its original Classical Revival glory. The kitchen is key to the Servant Life Tour, and among the rooms seen in The Gilded Age.
4 Biltmore – the Vanderbilts
The Vanderbilts were not known for restraint, and George Washington Vanderbilt II outdid them all with the aptly named Biltmore. His self-styled “little mountain escape” in North Carolina remains the US’s largest privately owned house. He bought 700 parcels of land (including five cemeteries), hired the man behind New York’s Central Park to design the gardens, and travelled to Europe with his architect to get inspiration from French Renaissance chateaux. Vanderbilt also went on a shopping spree there, procuring thousands of items, some centuries old, for this 250-room house built in 1889-95. Still owned by his descendants, Biltmore is now all about visitors. In addition to tours, there are numerous dining options, a winery, spa, accommodation (sadly not in the mansion) and outdoor activities, from carriage rides to clay shooting. A 17m Norway spruce adorned with 55,000 lights is erected on the front lawn each year as the centrepiece of lavish, property-wide Christmas decorations. The festivities have already begun and continue until January 7.
5 Hyde Park – the Vanderbilts
Yet another Vanderbilt, Frederick William, had relatively modest ambitions for Hyde Park, his 54-room holiday home in Upstate New York’s picturesque Hudson Valley. Constructed in 1896-99, it’s a notable example of Beaux-Arts, the neoclassical architectural style taught at Paris’s Ecole des Beaux-Arts and then popular in the US (think New York’s Grand Central Station). With formal gardens, forested parkland, and views of the Hudson River and Catskill Mountains, this property was designed for relaxation and was easily accessed by the family’s own New York Central Railroad. The house still seems magnificent to modern eyes. Centred around a high-ceilinged, elliptical gathering space, it includes antique furniture, tapestries and architectural salvage from Europe, plus sumptuous materials such as exotic wood, marble and velvet.
6 Kykuit – the Rockefellers (industry, politics and banking)
The Rockefellers, another family synonymous with Gilded Age wealth, were Hudson Valley neighbours at Kykuit, which means “lookout” in Dutch. Built on a hill for John D. Rockefeller, this 40-room Classical Revival house still offers vistas of the Hudson River and New York City’s skyline 110 years after it was completed. The interior, which was influenced by Wharton’s Decoration of Houses, features art collected by four generations of Rockefellers, including John junior’s antique Chinese ceramics, and modern art acquired by his son, Nelson. Works by Warhol, Chagall (who were both visitors here), Picasso and Moore are among this former US vice-president’s extensive contribution, which extends into the delightful terraced gardens, including Japanese, Italian, rose and morning gardens.
7 Winterthur – the Du Pont family (from gunpowder to chemicals and cars)
Delaware’s Winterthur Museum, Garden and Library hosts what is probably the world’s largest and richest collection of American furniture and decorative arts. On land owned by the du Pont family (of industrial chemical fame and fortune) since the early 19th century, successive generations built, enlarged and restyled the house that became a French-style manor in the 1890s. Its heyday was still to come, however. When Henry Francis du Pont inherited the Winterthur estate in 1927, the house tripled in size to accommodate his ever-expanding collection of Americana: not only tens of thousands of objects from the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries, but substantial architectural features such as stairs and wood panelling from heritage buildings. From a George Washington dinner service to Chinese wallpaper created for the American market, treasures are presented in a home-like, albeit stately setting amid 400ha of gardens, meadows, forest and waterways.
8 Boldt Castle – hotelier George Boldt
Boldt Castle, in Upstate New York’s pleasant Thousand Islands region, was commissioned by the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel’s proprietor, George Boldt, as a gift for his wife. When she died suddenly in 1904, shortly before the fairytale structure on Heart Island was due for completion, the devastated widower stopped construction and never returned. After being abandoned for 73 years, the site opened to the public and ongoing restoration work began on the castle, its gardens and associated stone structures. Lately that has extended to adding elements that were only designs in 1904, such as a stained-glass ceiling and Venetian-inspired fountain. Open May-October and accessible by numerous tour boats, including from nearby Canada, Boldt Castle is an official US Port of Entry.
9 Whitehall – oil tycoon Henry Flagler
Most Gilded Age mansions are in the northeastern states, but notable exceptions include Florida’s Whitehall, completed in 1902 for oil tycoon Henry Flagler. He spent his winters here, travelling from New York in a private train carriage now restored and displayed at the property. Various periods of European design inspired different aspects of his 75-room Palm Beach beauty, from the facade’s classical columns to the French Renaissance-style dining room. Feast your eyes on art, architecture, extravagant interior design and tropical plants year-round, and also indulge the other senses during the northern winter. Whitehall’s peak-season offerings include a Gilded Age-style Tea Service, classical music concerts, an annual lecture series usually focused on the era, and exhibitions such as the showcase of Art Nouveau artist Alphonse Mucha on January 16-April 14, 2024.
10 The Frick Collection – coal and steell baron Henry Clay Frick
Among the few remaining Gilded Age mansions that once lined New York’s Fifth Ave is Henry Clay Frick’s, completed in 1914. Having funded his passion for art with a fortune made in coal and steel, he bequeathed this Beaux-Arts house and its now-priceless contents to the public as a museum. Opened in 1935, The Frick Collection presents masterpieces by artists such as Vermeer, Turner, Titian and Rembrandt in a refined home-like setting of antique furniture and decorative art, including Qing-dynasty porcelain. One of the world’s finest small public galleries, it offers an approachable art experience that begins amid the tranquil glass-roofed Garden Court’s fountains and greenery. The collection is currently exhibited nearby while the house is closed for restoration until late 2024.
