Newport Cliff Walk Self-Guided Audio Walking Tour: The Gilded Age Coast Discover the free public path that has run along the cliffs below the richest families in America for over a century, with their Newport cottages originally built behind iron gates. Who this is for Walkers who want to see the Gilded Age's grandest mansions from the water side for free, and to know who built each one, what it cost, and how the public kept its right to walk the shore. About Newport Cliff Walk: The Gilded Age Coast Newport Cliff Walk: The Gilded Age Coast is a self-guided audio walking tour of Newport, Rhode Island, covering twenty-one stops along the three and a half miles of the Cliff Walk and the mansions of Bellevue Avenue behind it. You'll Learn About… On this tour you'll learn how Newport's Cliff Walk, a free path protected by a 1663 charter from King Charles II, came to run along the ocean side of The Breakers, Marble House, Rosecliff and Rough Point, so that every step lands on a shore those families tried to keep to themselves. You'll also find out that parts of the path that existed twenty years ago are gone, taken by the Atlantic and rebuilt since. The money is part of the story, and the numbers are specific. The Breakers, with 70 rooms across five floors, cost $7 million in 1895, about $250 million today. Marble House cost $11 million when it was finished in 1892, and $7 million of that went to marble alone. You'll hear how Caroline Schermerhorn Astor and Ward McAllister set the boundary of American high society at the 400 people her Beechwood ballroom could hold. Some houses have stranger histories. Edson Bradley made a whiskey fortune, built a French Gothic mansion in Washington, and in 1923 decided the house belonged in Newport instead. Edith Wharton paid $80,000 in 1893 for Land's End, a wooden cottage she flatly disliked, with "half an acre of rock and illimitable miles of Atlantic Ocean." Quatrel takes its name from four L's, one for each letter in Louis Lorillard's name and one for each member of his family. And Ochre Court, in the Louis XIII style, borrows its turrets and dormers from the châteaux of France's Loire Valley. Along the shore, you'll learn why locals call a sliver of public sand beside a private club Rejects Beach, and how Easton's Beach became Rhode Island's oldest public beach in 1887. The Route: 21 Stops in Newport The Story of the Cliff Walk: the white marble summer houses that their owners called "cottages," and the shoreline beneath them. The Cliff Walk: a free public trail on contested ground, resting on a claim that reaches back to 1663. Easton's Beach: Rhode Island's oldest public beach, established in 1887. The Chanler at Cliff Walk: built in 1873, before the Vanderbilts and the Astors raised their marble palaces. The Forty Steps: stone-and-concrete stairs cut into the cliff face, dropping to a broad ledge at the water's edge. Vinland Estate: red sandstone Richardsonian Romanesque, modeled on a round tower Newporters of the day believed was Viking. Anglesea: an 1880 "cottage" of about 6,400 square feet for a Philadelphia dried goods merchant, Walter H. Lewis. Ochre Court: Richard Morris Hunt's Loire Valley château in Newport. The Breakers: 70 rooms, a $7 million price tag in 1895, and about two months of use a year. Seaview Terrace: the whiskey king's French Gothic house that moved to Newport in 1923. Rosecliff: 28,800 square feet of snow-white terra cotta, modeled by Stanford White on Louis XIV's Grand Trianon. Beechwood: Mrs. Astor's summer cottage, with a ballroom that held exactly 400. Marble House: 500,000 cubic feet of marble and an $11 million bill. Chinese Tea House: a lacquered pavilion on the ocean edge of the Marble House lawn, invisible from Bellevue Avenue. Miramar: a Widener family summer home drawn from a French hôtel by the family's architect. Ocean View: on the cliff top since 1866, nearly thirty years before The Breakers was finished. Quatrel: a family cipher of four L's on 1.24 acres across from Rough Point. Rough Point: 105 rooms on a rocky promontory, behind two-ton iron gates. The Waves: the house built by the architect of the Jefferson Memorial for himself. Land's End: the plain wooden cottage Edith Wharton bought in 1893 and disliked. Rejects Beach: the public sand beside Bailey's Beach, and the name locals gave it. Practical Details The tour is self-guided and runs at your own pace. It covers twenty-one stops along the three and a half miles of the Cliff Walk and Bellevue Avenue, and you can take them in any order, since each one stands on its own. The Cliff Walk itself is free and open to the public, and the audio can be played wherever you are, including at home. Take the Newport Cliff Walk Tour Download the app and start the Newport Cliff Walk: The Gilded Age Coast audio tour to hear the stories behind the mansions from the public path below them.
