The Gilded Age, which dawned at the end of the American Civil War, saw the rise of super-wealthy American “captains of industry” (critics called them “Robber Barons”). A favorite summer escape for these ultra-rich figures became Newport, Rhode Island. Here, the Gilded Age elite financed a new school of American architects to create a distinctly “American” vision of wealth and success to compete with European palaces and old-money estates.

The Breakers is the grandest of Newport’s “cottages,” the preferred term for the Rhode Island city’s impressive collection of Gilded Age mansions. Built in 1895 by Cornelius Vanderbilt II—heir to the Vanderbilt railroad and shipping fortune—The Breakers boasts 48 bedrooms, 27 bathrooms and 19th-century technological marvels like hydraulic-powered elevators.

In an era when fewer than 5 percent of homes had electricity, every room at The Breakers featured electric lights and bathroom fixtures capable of delivering hot and cold cistern water or hot and cold seawater. Behind the scenes, the serving staff could communicate with any room in the house via telephone.

Thanks to the work of preservationists, the grandeur of The Breakers and other Gilded Age mansions and gardens in Newport is preserved across 11 historic properties that are open to the public as time capsules of the city’s extravagant past.

Founded in 1639, Newport was a British colonial outpost whose early economy depended heavily on the Atlantic slave trade. In the 18th century, 60 percent of American colonial ships that trafficked in enslaved people from West Africa set sail from Rhode Island.

Part of the so-called “triangular trade,” rum produced in Rhode Island was traded for captive West Africans, who were then brought to Caribbean sugar plantations, where they were traded for molasses. In the final leg, molasses and some enslaved people were shipped to Rhode Island to make more rum.

Later, during the American Revolution, Newport became a hotbed of anti-British sentiment. British troops occupied the city from 1776 to 1779, and Newport became a divided community, says Rebecca Bertrand, executive director of the Newport Historical Society.

“Walking the streets of Newport, you might be a Patriot, but your neighbors could be Loyalists,” says Bertrand. “A lot of people fled Newport when the British came, and a lot of homes were destroyed in the Stamp Act riots. By the time the British left Newport, the economy had definitely taken a hit.”

While many of Newport’s industries languished after the Revolutionary War, the island village earned a new reputation as a fashionable summer getaway for Southern plantation owners, says Nicole Williams, curator of collections at The Preservation Society of Newport County.

“Many southerners summered in Newport to escape the heat and disease outbreaks (malaria, yellow fever) on their plantations,” says Williams. “As a result, Newport became known as the ‘Carolina Hospital.’”

George Noble Jones, a wealthy plantation owner and enslaver, built one of the first “cottages” in Newport in 1841. In the 19th-century, the term “cottage” referred to a summer residence and conjured up bucolic notions of a simple home out in the country. While some of Newport’s original cottages were relatively humble wooden dwellings, people like Jones had the money to go big.

Designed by architect Richard Upjohn, Jones’s cottage—now known as Kingscote—is a landmark of Gothic Revival architecture with medieval-style arches and towers. Kingscote was the first Newport mansion built on a sleepy country road called Bellevue Avenue, which later became the address of half a dozen grand homes like Rosecliff, Beechwood and Miramar.

With the outbreak of the Civil War, Newport became “a less congenial place for Southerners,” says Williams. In their place, an influential group of 19th-century artists, writers and educators flocked to Newport, which earned yet another reputation as an artists' colony and summer escape for intellectuals.

The writer Henry James and his brother William came to Newport to study painting under William Morris Hunt. The geologist and educator William Barton Rogers, who founded Massachusetts Institute of Technology, built a “modest” cottage in Newport called Morningside.

Mark Twain coined the term “Gilded Age” in a satirical novel penned in 1873. The barbed term referred to the thin, “gilded” veneer of money and success that masked the struggles of the poor workers who labored in America’s factories, railroads and shipyards. Very few Americans actually got rich during the Gilded Age, but those who did got spectacularly, filthily rich.

“At the time, there was a lack of government oversight and regulation—a very laissez-faire economic environment that allowed industrialists to build monopolies and engage in other unfair, anticompetitive business practices,” says Williams. “And there was no federal income tax!”

Newport’s mansions were paid for by the fortunes of industrialist families like the Vanderbilts (railroads), the Astors (opium trade and real estate) and the Berwinds (coal), but they were designed by a brilliant group of visionary architects.

“The Gilded Age is the birth of the American architect,” says Bertrand. “There are new materials—you can build steel structures that can support heavy limestone and marble exteriors. There’s electricity. There are a lot of things happening at the same time.”

One of America’s best-known Gilded Age architects was Richard Morris Hunt (the brother of artist William Morris Hunt), who designed Newport mansions like The Breakers and Marble House, both for the Vanderbilts. Trained in Paris, Hunt was intent on defining and elevating American “culture.” Not only did Hunt design landmark homes, but he also helped found cultural institutions like the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

The Breakers, perched on an oceanside cliff overlooking Newport’s Eastern Bay, was designed by Hunt to look like an Italian palace. The exterior featured brick and limestone with Renaissance-inspired colonnades and stately porches. The interior was as opulent as the finest European country estates. The central Great Hall had 50-foot ceilings and was modeled after the Opera House in Paris. The marble mosaic tiles lining the floors and ceiling of the Billiard Room were hand-laid by artisans imported from Europe.

Before The Breakers, Hunt also designed Marble House for Cornelius Vanderbilt’s younger brother William, who commissioned the “summer cottage” as a gift for his wife Alva’s 39th birthday. Finished in 1892, Marble House cost a reported $11 million with $7 million of that going to the 500,000 cubic feet of marble covering the 50-room interior from floor to ceiling.

At the turn of the 20th century, Newport was a summer playground for the wealthiest families in America. For six weeks, Newport’s “Gold Coast” was a whirlwind of galas and garden parties, with each family vying to outdo the others in elegance and extravagance.

“One of my favorites was a ‘Dog Ball’ thrown by Harry Lehr and Mamie Fish for more than 100 guests and their pampered pooches,” says Williams. “The canines enjoyed an elaborate three-course meal that included stewed liver, fricassee made of bones and biscuits. At a time of great inequality, social critics condemned the Dog Ball for its frivolity and excess.”

Newport’s Gilded Age fantasy began to unravel in 1913 with the institution of the federal income tax. World War I and the stock market crash of 1929 delivered the knockout punches. Most of the wealthy families had other mansions in New York City or Boston to pay for, so they sold off their Newport cottages.

“Many of Newport’s mansions were torn down, destroyed by fire or converted into apartments and university buildings,” says Williams.

Thankfully, concerned philanthropists stepped in. Katherine Warren of the Preservation Society of Newport County and Doris Duke of the Newport Restoration Foundation were able to save many of these historic buildings, restore them and open them to the public. Duke, the tobacco heiress and philanthropist, had her own magnificent home in Newport called Rough Point, which is now a museum.