Designing Leisure in the Gilded Age

Em Dombrovskaya, WPAMC ’24

After a picturesque drive past the stately Gilded Age mansions of Newport, Rhode Island, I was struck by the architectural range of a downtown block of Bellevue Avenue. The block—commonly known as the Bellevue Avenue/Casino Historic District—contains the Audrain Building designed by Bruce Price, The Travers Block by Richard Morris Hunt, King Block by Perkins and Betton, and the Newport Casino by McKim, Mead and White, which were all built between 1870 and 1903. These buildings are a quintessential commercial zone of Newport, filled with little boutiques, indoor tennis courts, and two museums dedicated to the interests of the wealthy families who summered in town–the Audrain Car Museum, and the International Tennis Hall of Fame. 

These four buildings vary in style from the terra cotta embellishments in the style of the Florentine Renaissance sculptor Lucca della Robbia on the facade of the Audrain Building to the Tudor-esque beams of the Travers Block. In contrast to these more experimental forms, the Newport mansions built around the same time, such as The Breakers, Marble House, The Elms, and Rosecliff, are closer to the Beaux Arts style McKim, Mead & White and Richard Morris Hunt were known for during their time. I noticed the buildings of Bellevue Avenue because we walked past them three or four times on our way to various Newport landmarks, unlike the mansions which are strategically located so that people take in a striking facade with a big name attached to it and move on. 

The most widely remembered architects of the Gilded Age had many irons in the fire at once—mansions, industrial towns, government buildings, sculptural memorials. Many of the projects McKim, Mead & White and Morris Hunt are most remembered for are public spaces in New York City closer in style to their mansions. For the former it’s the Morgan Library, the Washington Square Arch, and 11 branches of the New York Public Library, while for Morris Hunt, it’s the facade of the Met and the base of the Statue of Liberty. These are iconic elements of the New York cityscape. They project the image of late 19th-century industrial success, the capitalist growth which transformed the city. In Newport, these architects got to do something different. The varied shingles, heavy beams, and masonry of the Bellevue Avenue/Casino Historic District give some insight into fantasies of luxury and leisure, something which needed to be distinct from the city New Yorker’s were leaving to enjoy the ocean. They invoke the shingle style of New England beach towns, or Tudor country homes, or grand tours in Italy—a range of escapes less than 200 miles away from the bustling financial center.