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Exploring Newport's Harrison Avenue and Halidon Hill - Part 2

After studying its Gilded Age history  (click here for my previous post), I decided to explore Harrison Avenue and Halidon Hill on a visit to Newport last summer, curious to see what if anything remained of its Gilded Age past.  Much to my pleasant surprise, plenty does. While at a passing glance it might appear that most of the cottages are long gone and the former estates broke up, it pays to look beyond the later development and explore side streets.  One will be rewarded by some of the Newport’s hidden gems, some still well-maintained and occupied as single-family homes.  Even some vestiges of some long gone grander estates remain.

A Gilded Age History of Newport's Harrison Avenue and Halidon Hill neighborhood

I never thought much about the Harrison Avenue area around Halidon Hill as being a hotspot during Newport’s Gilded Age, aside from a few stellar holdovers like Bonniecrest and Harbor Court. Over time the began area popping up more and more often during research in association with various gilded age luminaries including Whitneys and Vanderbilts who summered there. Delving a little deeper I found while it may not have achieved the same degree of popularity as Bellevue Avenue or Ochre Point, this enclave overlooking the harbor had its own cachet, populated by a mixture of Old New York Society names with enough “Nobs” and “Swells” thrown in to keep it chic. 

Newport's "Age of Innocence" Neighborhood

When imagining the scenes set in Newport from Edith Wharton’s The Age of Innocence, it is all too easy to picture the characters swanning in and out of Marble House, Rosecliff, The Elms, or other mansions of their ilk.  Yet the Newport from the 1870s and 1880s that she wrote of in her book looked quite different in reality. Fortunately, there is a neighborhood in Newport that still retains some of that "Age of Innocence" character.....

Gatehouses of the Hudson River Historic District

From simple tenant farmhouses to romantic storybook cottages to architect-designed fantasies, gatehouses are a defining element of the Hudson River Historic District.   Marking the entrances to a number of grand estates that form the core of the district, they give the passerby a tantalizing clue as to what lies out of sight down the long tree-lined drives they guard.