7 Newport Hotels Behind the Gilded Age Cottages

The Cliff Walk runs three and a half miles along the back of Newport's Gilded Age mansions, between the houses and the sea, and it is public. The owners spent decades trying to close it and lost, because the right of way rests on colonial-era fishing access — rights granted to Rhode Island's residents to reach the shore, written into the state constitution, and predating every one of the houses by two hundred years.

So you walk past the back lawns of The Breakers, Marble House and Rosecliff at a distance of a few metres, and there is nothing the owners could ever do about it. Sections were built up by the families themselves as a condition of keeping it away from their front doors.

Cottages

The houses were called cottages, which was a joke that has outlived the people making it. The Breakers has seventy rooms across about 125,000 square feet, was built for Cornelius Vanderbilt II between 1893 and 1895, and was occupied for perhaps eight to ten weeks a year during the summer season. Marble House used five hundred thousand cubic feet of marble. Rosecliff was modelled on the Grand Trianon at Versailles.

They were built in a roughly thirty-year window, they were used for a fraction of each year, and the income tax, the Depression and the collapse of domestic service ended the whole arrangement within a generation. The Preservation Society of Newport County now owns eleven of them.

The rest of the state

Newport is on Aquidneck Island and it is also a sailing town — host of the America's Cup from 1930 to 1983, and still the centre of American yachting, with the harbour full of boats from May to October.

Watch Hill and Weekapaug, an hour southwest on the mainland coast, are quieter Victorian summer colonies with long beaches.

Block Island, an hour by ferry, has around a thousand year-round residents, no traffic lights, and roughly forty percent of its land under permanent conservation.

The seven below are grouped that way.

Newport

The mansions and the harbour.

Castle Hill Inn occupies a 1874 mansion on forty acres at the tip of the peninsula with its own beach, a lighthouse on the property and the bay on three sides. It is the best hotel in New England.

The Chanler at Cliff Walk sits directly on the Cliff Walk in an 1873 house with rooms individually themed to periods and places, and a terrace over the Atlantic.

Gurney's Newport Resort & Marina occupies a position on Newport harbour with a spa, a pool and the marina and the shops of Thames Street outside.

The Vanderbilt, Auberge Resorts Collection sits on Goat Island in the middle of the harbour with a marina, a spa and water on every side.

Hotel Viking occupies a 1926 brick building on the main street with a rooftop and the mansions a short drive south.

Watch Hill and Weekapaug

The mainland coast, an hour southwest.

Ocean House occupies an 1868 building above the Watch Hill beach, restored at length, with a spa, a private beach club and a carousel from 1883 in the village below that is the oldest in the country.

Weekapaug Inn sits on a salt pond at Weekapaug in a 1899 inn rebuilt after a hurricane, with a naturalist on staff and the barrier beach a short walk away.

What we have left off

The house rentals across Newport and the southern Rhode Island coast are excluded, and in July and August they are how a great many families take the summer. They are houses rather than hotels.

What to do

Walk the Cliff Walk end to end, and note that the southern section is rough scrambling over rocks rather than a paved path. Sections close after storms.

Tour two mansions rather than six. The Breakers for scale, Marble House or The Elms for the better interiors, and the servants' tour at The Elms is the most interesting of any of them.

Get on the water. Twelve-metre America's Cup yachts run afternoon sails from the harbour and several are original boats from the competition.

Drive or cycle Ocean Drive, a ten-mile loop around the peninsula past Brenton Point, which is free and rivals the Cliff Walk.

See the Touro Synagogue, dedicated in 1763 and the oldest surviving synagogue building in the United States, and the International Tennis Hall of Fame, which still has grass courts you can play on.

Practical notes

Providence is forty minutes away and Boston ninety. Newport has no rail service; a car or a bus is needed.

Late May to early October is the season. July and August are busiest and the jazz and folk festivals in late July and early August fill the town entirely. Winter is quiet, cold and the mansions run candlelit Christmas tours.

Parking in Newport in summer is genuinely difficult.

Why is the Cliff Walk public?

Colonial-era shore access rights written into the state constitution, predating the houses by two centuries. The owners litigated and lost.

How big is The Breakers?

Seventy rooms across about 125,000 square feet, used for perhaps ten weeks a year.

Newport or Watch Hill?

Newport for the mansions, the harbour and the sailing. Watch Hill for quiet and a better beach. An hour apart.

How many nights?

Three. Two for Newport and one on the southern coast.

If you only book one