|
The Breakers is a Vanderbilt mansion located on Ochre Point Avenue, Newport, Rhode Island, United States on the Atlantic Ocean. It is a National Historic Landmark, a contributing property to the Bellevue Avenue Historic District, and is owned and operated by the Preservation Society of Newport County. The Breakers was built as the Newport summer home of Cornelius Vanderbilt II, a member of the wealthy United States Vanderbilt family. It is built in an Italian Renaissance style. Designed by renowned architect Richard Morris Hunt, with interior decoration by Jules Allard and Sons and Ogden Codman, Jr., the 70-room mansion has a gross area of 125,339 square feet and 62,482 square feet of living area on five floors.〔(【引用サイトリンク】title=Newport County Tax Records )〕 The house was constructed between 1893 and 1895. The Ochre Point Avenue entrance is marked by sculpted iron gates and the walkway gates are part of a 12-foot-high limestone-and-iron fence that borders the property on all but the ocean side. The footprint of the house covers approximately an acre of the 13-acre estate on the cliffs overlooking the Atlantic Ocean. ==History== Cornelius Vanderbilt II purchased the grounds in 1885 for $450,000. When the previous mansion on the property owned by Pierre Lorillard IV burned on November 25, 1892, Cornelius Vanderbilt II commissioned famed architect Richard Morris Hunt to rebuild it in splendor. Vanderbilt insisted that the building be made as fireproof as possible and as such, the structure of the building used steel trusses and no wooden parts. He even required that the boiler be located away from the house, in an underground space below the front lawn.〔Vanderbilt, Arthur T. ''Fortune's Children: The Fall of the House of Vanderbilt'' Perennial: 1989. 185-7.〕 The designers created an interior using marble imported from Italy and Africa, and rare woods and mosaics from countries around the world. It also included architectural elements (such as the library mantel) purchased from chateaux in France. Expansion was finally finished in 1892.〔Vanderbilt, 185-6.〕 The Breakers is the architectural and social archetype of the "Gilded Age," a period when members of the Vanderbilt family were among the major industrialists of America.〔Gannon, Thomas. ''Newport Mansions: the Gilded Age.'' Fort Church Publishers, Inc., 1982: p. 8.〕 In 1895, the year of its completion, The Breakers was the largest, most opulent house in the Newport area. It represents the taste of an American upper class—socially ambitious but lacking a noble pedigree—who were determined to imitate and surpass the European aristocracy in lifestyle; a taste and ambition which was cynically noted by many members of the European upper-classes. However, this cynicism, coupled with assumptions of vulgarity, was not so deeply rooted that it prevented the daughters of these lavish houses and their associated dollars from marrying into the European aristocracy.〔Mackenzie Stuart, p240 and throughout.〕 Vanderbilt died from a cerebral hemorrhage caused by a second stroke in 1899 at the age of 55, leaving The Breakers to his wife, Alice Gwynne Vanderbilt. She outlived her husband by 35 years and died at the age of 89 in 1934. In her will, The Breakers was given to her youngest daughter, Countess Gladys Széchenyi (1886–1965), essentially because Gladys lacked American property. Also, none of Alice's other children were interested in the property, while Gladys had always loved the estate. The Breakers survived the great New England Hurricane of 1938 with minimal damage and minor flooding of the grounds. In 1948, Gladys leased the high-maintenance property to The Preservation Society of Newport County for $1 a year. The Preservation Society bought The Breakers and approximately 90% of its furnishings in 1972 for $365,000 from Countess Sylvia Szapary, the daughter of Gladys. However, the agreement with the Society granted life tenancy to the Countess Szapary. Upon her death in 1998, The Preservation Society agreed to allow the family to continue to live on the third floor, which is not open to the public.〔 〕 It is now the most-visited attraction in Rhode Island with approximately 400,000 visitors annually and is open year-round for tours. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「The Breakers」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
|