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H.A.C. Taylor House (1886)
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- Taylor Estate
- Architects: McKim, Mead & White
- Located on Annandale Road
- Demolished: 1952
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The icon of Colonial Revival architecture in America, McKim, Mead & White’s internationally celebrated cottage for Henry Augustus Coit Taylor of New York initiated the Adamesque-inspired “Colonial” design that continued through the Second World War and, in an abridged fashion, survives in America to the present. The house was demolished in 1952 for subdivision of its grounds. Some architectural salvage was incorporated into the adjacent outbuildings of Ocean Lawn and into a Colonial Revival subdivision, Johnson Terrace, then under construction on East Main Road in Middletown.
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Rockhurst (1891)
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- H. Mortimer Brooks Estate
- Architects: Peabody & Stearns
- Located on Bellevue Avenue at Ledge Road
- Demolished: 1955
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This stone and shingle summer residence for Mrs. H. Mortimer B rooks of New York was amongst the most Châteauesque of Peabody & Stearns’ Newport cottages. The street façade featured rounded towers with candlesnuffer roofs flanking a central block with an open arcaded gallery along the second story. Following Mrs. Brooks’ death in 1920, the estate was sold to the John Aspegrens who renamed the property Aspen Hall during their 1922–29 occupancy. In 1930, the estate was purchased by Mrs. Walter B. James of New York and, in 1944, by Frederick H. Prince, who had purchased the nearby Marble House in 1932 for $1.00 (excluding furnishings). Mr. Prince sold Rockhurst in 1945 to Charles G. West who, with several partners, demolished the main house in September of 1955 for a residential subdivision. The gatehouse and gardener’s cottage survive and, recently restored by Mr. West’s descendants, give an excellent idea of the scale of the Brooks villa.
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Arleigh (1893)
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- Mrs. Ruthven H. Pratt Estate
- Architect: J.D. Johnston
- Located at the corner of Bellevue Avenue and Parker Avenue
- Demolished: 1932
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Built by Mrs. Mary Matthews and her daughter Mrs. R. H. Pratt, this Queen Anne style villa was subsequently leased to Mrs. Potter Palmer of Chicago and to Isabel Gebhard Neilson of New York and witnessed the 1903 marriage of Cathleen Neilson to Reginald C. Vanderbilt. In the following years, the estate was occupied by the social arbiter Harry Symes Lehr and his wife, Elizabeth Drexel Dahlgren Lehr, and was the site of the Lehrs’ witty “Dogs’ Dinner” co-hosted with Mrs. Stuyvesant Fish. Ravaged by arson on June 13, 1932, the house was torn down and a nursing home built on the site in 1972.
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Whitehall (1894)
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- David H. King Jr. Estate
- Architects: McKim, Mead & White
- Located at the corner of Catherine Street and Rhode Island Avenue
- Demolished: 1953
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Whitehall was built by McKim, Mead & White, in their newly popular Colonial Revival style, for a favorite client, New York building contractor and developer David H. King. In 1903, the estate was purchased by New York real-estate baron John Jay Coogan and used in season by his family until seriously damaged by fire on March 10, 1911. Due to the remodeling of the family’s Fifth Avenue residence, restoration work in Newport was postponed. With the 1915 death of Mr. Coogan, the house remained unoccupied. Although the family remained sentimentally attached to the estate, major repairs never advanced and led to the pervasive legend that the Coogans had been snubbed socially, having issued invitations for a dinner party to which no one came! In point of fact, the popular Mrs. Coogan was a great-granddaughter of John Lyon Gardiner and inherited from his estate a very large section of the upper end of Manhattan. The home was demolished in 1953 for a residential subdivision. |
Bleak House (1895)
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- Winans-Perry Estate
- Architects: Peabody & Stearns
- Located on Ocean Avenue at Winans Avenue
- Demolished: 1948
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Ross R. Winans, son of Baltimore railroad investor Thomas Winans, chose Peabody & Stearns to erect a low-slung Shingle Style villa on an exposed ledge facing Pirate’s Cove. Named after Dickens’ novel, to continue the tradition of his father’s so-named adjoining 1864 cottage (demolished in 1894), Bleak House was sold to Providence utilities magnate Marsden J. Perry in 1907. The estate remained in the Perry family until badly damaged by the 1938 hurricane. The house was demolished in 1948 with salvaged stonework removed by Trappist monks for use in the construction of a new monastery in Spencer, Massachusetts. In 1949, the oceanfront site and service buildings across Ocean Avenue were sold to Newport developer Louis Chartier for $90,000, and a residential subdivision was begun.
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