Great Homes of the World: The Breakers
Palatial mansion showcases the lavishness of America’s upper crust in The Gilded Age
The Gilded Age of America—roughly the late 1870s to early 1900s—was a time of rising wealth and status of some prominent American families, such as the Vanderbilts, Rockefellers, Carnegies and Morgans, particularly in the Western and Northeastern parts of the country. Due to their involvement in America’s burgeoning private financial system, railroad expansion, and shipping and manufacturing innovation, these families’ wealth grew at an exponential rate during this time period enmeshed with the Industrial Revolution. With more money to spend, the “captains of industry” designed and built architecturally significant residences to display their great wealth and accommodate their lavish lifestyles.
To showcase his societal standing, patriarch Cornelius Vanderbilt II commissioned an equally well-respected member of society—architect Richard Morris Hunt—to design his Newport, Rhode Island, mansion, The Breakers. Fronting the Atlantic Ocean in an influential port city known as a fashionable summer resort for New York finance and industry leaders, Newport provided a glittering social life for the Vanderbilt family. Their “summer cottage,” The Breakers, was Hunt’s final project and survives intact today with its original design and furnishings. Hunt planned the home as a quintessential example of American Beaux-Arts architectural style with eclectic European influences. It is the most opulent of Newport’s oceanside mansions built during The Gilded Age of nouveau-riche prosperity.
To understand the home’s architectural design, it’s important to know Hunt’s background. Born into a prominent political family, Hunt was always a social equal to the Vanderbilt family. When he was a teen, his widowed mother spirited he and his siblings off to live in Rome. Hunt first began studying art but at the urging of his family leaned into architecture. Surrounded by classic European architecture, he was the first American student admitted into Paris’ École des Beaux-Arts. The school trained the greatest of the artists and architects in Europe. Its Beaux-Arts architectural style and method of planning was ingrained into Hunt, which he brought back to his many projects in America. The most noteworthy projects include the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty; New York’s Tribune building with the first elevator; and private residences such as The Breakers and Marble House in Rhode Island and the Biltmore Estate in Asheville, NC.
While still in Europe, Hunt worked on projects in the Louvre Museum in Paris with his mentor, Parisian atelier-architect Hector Lefuel. All of his European experiences fueled an eclectic style that reinforced the importance of classical forms.
Back in America, his plan for The Breakers was to bring a sense of appreciation for European classicism and the craftsmanship enjoyed by the European upper class to what was to be the finest American residence of its time. He pursued the Beaux-Arts principles of design in this commission, inspired by Italian Renaissance villas and 16th-century palaces. The entire home is designed around a Great Hall. In the Italian residences he used as inspiration, this hall would have been open air, but the colder Rhode Island climate of The Breakers demanded an enclosed space. He brought European materials into the Great Hall, such as carved French limestone walls inlaid with African and Italian marble plaques. In this space and throughout the 70-room, five floor, 138,300-square-foot mansion, Hunt repeated an acorn and oak leaf motif which was the Vanderbilt family’s adopted symbol of strength and longevity. Many of the other main rooms on the first floor also are designed in the Italian Renaissance style, including the grand staircase, the library, the morning room, the billiard room, and the dining room. Other rooms on this floor, such as the ladies’ reception room, celebrate Louis XVI style.
In true Renaissance fashion, Hunt collaborated with specialty craftsmen and designers in the construction of The Breakers. The Music Room, for example, was designed by Richard Van der Boyen and built in France, disassembled and reconstructed at The Breakers by J. Allard and Sons of Paris in the Second Empire style. Boston architect Ogden Codman designed many of the bedrooms on the second and third floors in the Louis XIV and Louis XVI styles. Unique architectural touches abound, such as Mrs. Vanderbilt’s bedroom that features a perfectly oval room with curved doors that fit into the curvature of the walls.
Incredibly, Hunt completed the construction process of the residence in 27 months, a testament to his revolutionary planning methodology learned from studies abroad and his repertoire of past projects. He had as many of the elements as possible constructed simultaneously, including windows, doors, hardware and roof tiles. This precise planning allowed the home to be constructed very quickly for its size. He also implemented innovative features that were technologically sophisticated for the time, such as cisterns in the attic to supply water to the household. He designed all fixtures to accommodate both gas and electricity in a time when in-home electricity was an emerging luxury. He designed a central heating system, employing fireplaces only as a backup source of heat.
Vanderbilt insisted the home be as fireproof as possible, so Hunt designed the entire structure of masonry and steel. He located the boiler away from the home and buried it underground, and he situated the kitchen away from the main house.
As part of the Beaux-Arts style, Hunt incorporated sculptures and paintings into the interiors and gardens of The Breakers. Replicas of vases on display at the Louvre grace the Great Hall. A marble bust of homeowner Cornelius II and a bronze bust of his son, William Henry II, stand on pedestals in the library, both created by American sculptor John Ward. The landscape, designed through a collaborative effort of Hunt, landscape engineer Ernest Bowditch and forester James Bowditch, incorporates fountains, urns, terraces and statues important in formal classical design. Overall, the design team combined formal traditional elements usually found in public parks with naturalistic elements of private gardens. The gardens reflected the interior design tone of an eclectic mix of several European styles.
Now on the National Register of Historic Places and designated as a National Historic Landmark, The Breakers is Hunt’s culmination of a lifetime of European-inspired design in America. It reflects the modern technology and incredible wealth created by the Industrial Revolution in this country. When completed in 1895, it was the most opulent summer cottage in Newport, designed by the man that many consider one of the founding fathers of American architecture. It survives just as it was designed, maintained by The Preservation Society of Newport County and open to the public for viewing.