We ended up seeing Rosecliff (which has had several movies filmed there, including "True Lies" and "The Great Gatsby"), the Marble House, which was home to the very colorful Alva Davenport, sister to Rosecliff owner Theresa Fair Oelrichs, and the Elms. The latter two were National Historic Landmarks and featured audio tours. (The tickets don't have an end date, so we'll be able to go back and see more.)At Rosecliff, the bottom floor was guided and the second floor, which featured fashions from the 70s, was self-guided. Colleen immediately picked up on the heart-shaped staircase, which was to the side of where you entered. The front parlor was very cool (all rose colored) although Colleen would have rather seen pictures of the original owners instead of famous Newport society women. (We would later learn either the second or third owner had left for a time, only to return to significant water damage (the pipes had burst). It sounded like very little of the furniture (other than paintings glued to the ceiling - which was definitely a theme) - was original to the house, with most coming from the most recent owners before the Historical Society took over (the Monroes). (Again, this was also a theme of the other houses as well.)
Colleen really liked the parlor, but the ballroom was pretty special too. It was long in shape, with a view of the porch, big backyard and ocean. This ballroom, said to be either the largest or one of the largest (the tour guide and book differed on this point), is the room that's featured in the movies. We decided we liked it because it was so light and airy, as opposed to the VERY dark library, which reminded Colleen of winter. However, Colleen thought the big tent on the porch to the right (facing the ocean), took away from the room somewhat (more on that later.)As tour guides tend to be, this one was very protective of the original owner of the house, who we learned was the sister to Alva Davenport at the Marble House. She said "no matter what we heard over there," we should know that Theresa Fair Oelrichs was pretty special in her own right.
Colleen probably would have enjoyed Rosecliff more had the exterior been pretty. They told us they were picking up from a weekend event, but still - there were tents strewn about - not nearly as pristine as the Elms.
Whereas Rosecliff had almost a Greek/Parthenon look to it, Marble House (pretty muc
h next door - with a few houses, including the Astor house, in between) was grand in its own right, with tall columns and an aging fountain in front.The doors were pretty cool too -- looking all steel like with the
Davenport initials carved into the design (the audio tour told us that although they were quite heavy, a "child" could open them). When you walked in, you immediately saw the grand staircase (Colleen kind of wishes the sweetheart stairs were more like that - where you saw them immediately, although overall, she thinks the sweetheart stairs had more character.)The Gold Room, the ballroom equivalent that was the first room we saw after the entranceway, was very decadent.
But perhaps the best part is this is where we were introduced to our favorite "characters" - Alva Davenport's daughter Conseulo, and the guy who ran the place, who talked about a ball that lasted until 5 a.m., where the "gentler sex" had to be taken home because they were falling over drunk, and where he got to bed at 6 a.m. Through Consuelo's narrative (taken from memoirs) we learned her mom was really a tyrant, who, for all her talk of women's rights (she had a "Votes for Women" campaign) forced her daughter to marry a Duke she didn't like and made her wear something akin to an old fashioned scoliosis brace so she'd sit up straight. Apparently she was quite hard to work for, with the workmen leaving a message that conveyed that under the wallpaper, and her superintendent quit or threatened to quit several times.
The house was a 39th birthday gift from husband William K. Vanderbilt but they had divorced three years (1895) after the house was finished (1892). Apparently he tried to talk her out of it but she wanted to be an "example" for others that it could be done. (She didn't marry for love either - she did right after she divorced and moved down the street to Belcourt, using the house as more of a "closet" until after William K. died and she used the house and the Chinese Tea House she had built there for her women's right to vote rallies.
Also of interest from the audio tour was the tale of these dinners they had styled after the Russians where they would constantly be serving courses and as soon as the last course was served a new one would come out and they'd take your food away so they had all this food but you'd never be able to eat it!
Our final stop, the Elms, didn't have AS colorful characters to tell us about, but we did hear how after Mrs. Edward Julius Berwind died in 1922 (the house was completed in 1902), Mr. Berwind's sister Julia took over and that she would serve White Ladies (egg whites and gin among the ingredients) that apparently got people quite drunk (perhaps a ploy to win at bridge?) We also learned how she would serve milk and cookies to the kids who'd come over
and play in the yard (which included this HUGE tree, which was much more impressive than the "don't miss" Sunken Garden). Also, they apparently had a ball there just for the dogs of all the society people.For dinner we stopped at indoor/outdoor seafood restaurant, the Barking Crab, which had great pickles and corn on the cob, but the fried fish and particularly the french fries tasted too much like they'd taken a bath in beer. The highlight though, was watching this dog, Maxx, hang outside of the pet gift store named after him which was kitty corner from the restaurant.
We ended the evening with John Tesh telling us about how to make the most out of our time at work, two health-related studies out of Boston and provocative teenagers.
Houses: A+
Barking Crab: B
Tesh: Priceless
--POSTED BY COLLEEN
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