Visitor Info
View our FAQs, map & parking, guidelines, and more.
Tours
Explore our various tour types to find what’s best for you and your group.
Explore the Gilded Age
The Gilded Age was a period of unprecedented change in America. Fortunes were spent on luxuries such as the lavish "summer cottages" of Newport.
Episode Deep Dive
Learn about the people, places and events depicted in Julian Fellowes' popular historical drama series.
About Us
Our mission is to protect, preserve, and present the best of Newport County's architectural heritage. Learn more about us and our work.
Museum Rentals & Weddings
Host your wedding, rehearsal dinner, corporate event, or other celebration at our historic museums.
American architecture changed dramatically in the Gilded Age. Tall commercial buildings rose in New York and Chicago. Grand mansions were built for the wealthy, and churches took on an Old World Gothic appearance. At the residential level, changes included the use of shingles, the emergence of the Colonial Revival style, and the adoption of the bungalow style. This lecture will examine the architectural changes sweeping the country as well as the work of several architects who helped to change the appearance of America.
Event thumbnail photo credit: Chateau Sur Mer, 1851. Photograph taken by Richard Guy Wilson.
Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, 1871-76. Photograph taken by Richard Guy Wilson.
Chateau Sur Mer, 1851. Photograph taken by Richard Guy Wilson.
Wainwright Building, 1890-91. Photograph taken by Richard Guy Wilson.
Richard Guy Wilson is Commonwealth Professor Emeritus in Architectural History at the University of Virginia. He is a frequent lecturer, television commentator and author of many articles and books on different aspects of American and modern architecture and design including “The American Renaissance” (1979), “McKim, Mead & White, Architects” (1982), “Machine Age in America” (1986), “Thomas Jefferson’s Academical Village” (1993, 2009) “The Colonial Revival House” (2004), and “Edith Wharton at Home” (2012). He has taught the Victorian Society’s Newport Summer School for 40 years.
Explore the underground systems that made this great house a marvel of technology for its time.
See and hear how the other half lived as you take the Servant Life Tour at The Elms. This tour will highlight the stories of some of the men and women who worked to service the social whirl of Newport during the Gilded Age.
Change can be exciting. It can also be unsettling. During the Gilded Age, change was happening at a pace unmatched in American history.
Are we living in a second Gilded Age? The transformative years of the late 19th and early 20th centuries left a lasting legacy for our world today. Speaker: Dr. Michael Patrick Cullinane
Technologies like the telegraph, phonograph, photography and even the sewing machine revolutionized communication, connecting and shrinking the world. Speaker: Matthew Bird
Visit the heyday of Northeastern vacation spots from the Adirondacks to Coney Island, from Martha’s Vineyard to the Catskills, and from Saratoga to Newport. Speaker: Will B. Mackintosh
The Gilded Age is notorious as a time of rampant political corruption. It was also a time when reformers ignited a reinvention of American democracy. Speaker: T.J. Stiles
Who were the everyday people in this period of industrialization and urbanization? What were their struggles and triumphs? Speaker: Nancy C. Unger
The Newport Flower Show will celebrate the early 19th-century custom of a trip as a means of gaining both exposure and association with the sophistication of Europe.
Plan to join us for a fun and elegant evening of dinner and dancing at our annual black-tie fundraising event.
Plan now to put together a foursome and join us at our annual Golf Outing at Newport National Golf Course in Middletown, R.I., a challenging, 7,244-yard links-style course offering a dramatic setting with views of the Atlantic Ocean and Sakonnet Passage.
The 2023 festival will continue with the successful format of daily seminars held at Rosecliff that provide our guests with an intimate, educational wine, spirits or food experience.
It is never too early to start planning for your next holiday to remember! Mark your calendar to join us for the annual Holiday Dinner Dance at The Breakers.
Download our tour app before your visit and bring your earbuds.
Parking is free onsite at all properties except for Hunter House and The Breakers Stable & Carriage House, where street parking is available.
Answers to some of our most frequently asked questions.
Explore the 11 properties under the stewardship of the Preservation Society and open as historic house museums.
Partners in Preservation
