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December 3, 2004

A Very Vanderbilt Christmas

Yesterday, Susanne and I took our new car for its first weekend road trip, heading down to Newport, Rhode Island to visit some of its famous 19th century mansions. While Newport may be most popular in the summer, December is a great time to visit, because several of the mansions are decked out in full Christmas regalia.

It's only a 90-minute drive from Boston to Newport, so we arrived there just before lunch. We bought a multi-mansion pass that would allow us to visit the three mansions decorated for the holidays: The Elms, The Breakers and Marble House.

The ElmsOur first stop was The Elms. Built at the turn of the 20th century for coal magnate E.J. Berwind, The Elms is a replica of Chateau D'Agnes in Asnieres, France. Entering the mansion, we were giving an audio guide, a small digital recorder with a room-by-room guide to the mansion. The audio tour took just over 30 minutes, leading us through the mansion's grand bedrooms, drawing room, kitchens and dining room, which was decorated with an enormous painting of Alexander the Great. I particularly enjoyed the part of the tour that led us through the kitchen and pantry: magnificent, spacious rooms that could cook a feast for hundreds of guests at a time.

After The Elms, our next stop was The Breakers. Perhaps the most famous mansion in America and the most visited tourist attraction in Rhode Island, The Breakers is the grand dame of Newport mansions. Constructed for Cornelius Vanderbilt in the 1890s, the mansion drips with opulance, extravagance, grandeur, excess. The Breakers is built around a two-story Great Hall, a magnificent space that could entertain hundreds of guests. At the far end of the Great Hall was a Christmas tree constructed entirely of poinsettia plants. To the left of the tree, a regal red staircase led to the second floor; from the base of the stairs you could see a huge painting of Mrs. Vanderbilt, just below a magical green skylight that had originally resided in the Vanderbilt's New York estate.

The BreakersWe didn't have an audio guide for our visit to The Breakers, which was a shame; the pamphlet given to us simply didn't convey the stories contained in the digital player we used at The Elms. Nonetheless, the mansion was magnificent, particularly the dining room. Inspired by Versailles and reminiscent of The Hermitage in St. Petersburg, the dining room is perhaps the grandest eating hall in all of North America.

The third mansion on our tour was Marble House, another Vanderbilt estate. Constructed entirely of marble at a cost of more than $10 million, Marble House is a stunning site. The styles of the rooms varied greatly; in one corner of the house we found a monastery-like Gothic Room, complete with stained glass, while Mrs. Vanderbilt's bedroom looked like a suite suited for Marie Antoinette herself. While not as over-the-top magnificent as The Breakers, Marble House was actually more interesting because it came with an excellent audio guide. The guide conveyed the personality of Mrs. Vanderbilt and her daughter quite dramatically, particularly since it made it apparent that the daughter resented the mother's controlling nature.

After a brief stop at a local pub, we paid a return visit to The Breakers for a special treat. The mansion was open that evening as part of a holiday tour program that only occurs on Saturday nights each December. It's one of the few chances visitors get to experience the mansion at night. Top it off with live music and festive snacks, it was an opportunity we didn't want to miss.


The Great Hall at The Breakers

The Great Hall of The Breakers. Click the photo to see a video of the "12 Days of Christmas" singalong.
Having just visited the mansion a few hours earlier, we didn't need the paper guides that were handed out at the entrance. Instead we strolled the house with confidence, quickly learning the location of all the main rooms. Several hundred other visitors strolled the mansion, some dressed in tuxes and furs, others in jeans and sweatshirts. In the Great Hall, an a capella group sang Christmas songs, while the Lower Loggia played host to a selection of pastries, as well as apple cider and egg nog. Unfortunately, you weren't allowed to take your snacks out of the room, and you couldn't hear the music from there, so I felt like we were always in a rush to nosh and get out of there.

Meanwhile, the singers led all of us in a series of Christmas Carols, the highlight of which was a tag-team rendition of The 12 Days of Christmas. The singers had the crowd break into different groups, each having a singing assignment. Susanne and I found ourselves in a the group singing "10 lords a-leaping" and "11 pipers piping." Some groups were better than others, several of them clearly taking their job quite seriously. The best group was the team singing "five golden rings"; the only group on the second floor of the Great Hall, the singers were loud, out of tune, and thoroughly entertaining. It was a wonderful way to kick off the holiday season.... -andy

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Posted by acarvin at December 3, 2004 8:42 AM

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