The Breakers

The Breakers stands on Ochre Point Avenue in Newport, Rhode Island, on a cliff above the Atlantic Ocean. It was built as a summer house for Cornelius Vanderbilt II, a grandson of the shipping and railroad magnate Cornelius Vanderbilt, and his family.

An earlier mansion on the site burned down on 25 November 1892. Vanderbilt hired the architect Richard Morris Hunt to design a new, fireproof house of steel, brick and limestone, and it was completed between 1893 and 1895. The interiors were produced by the French designer Jules Allard and others, with materials brought from Europe. The house remained with the Vanderbilt family until 1972, when the Preservation Society of Newport County bought it. It was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1994.

The mansion has about 70 rooms and is modelled on Renaissance palaces of Genoa and Turin. The Great Hall rises about 15 metres high, and the Morning Room, Music Room and Dining Room are decorated with marble, gilding, mosaics and platinum leaf. The house overlooks lawns stretching to the ocean, and the Cliff Walk passes along its edge.

The Breakers is open to the public as a house museum with an audio tour. An adult ticket costs $32 for timed entry to the house and grounds, youths aged 6 to 12 pay $14 and children under 6 enter free. Tickets can also be bought with other Newport mansions managed by the Preservation Society. Booking a timed entry is recommended in summer.

Vanderbilt bought the grounds in 1885 for $450,000, from Pierre Lorillard IV, whose wooden house was the one that burned. The new house has about 62,482 square feet of living space over five floors, out of a gross area of 138,300 square feet, and the interiors were finished by Jules Allard and Sons with Ogden Codman Jr.

The Preservation Society first leased the house in 1948 for $1 a year and opened it that July, charging $1.25 a head, before buying it in December 1972 for $365,000. By 2017 it drew about 450,000 visitors a year, more than any other attraction in Rhode Island.