`Millionaire's Row' Gives Glimpse Of Forgotten Era

NEWPORT, R.I. - For two miles along Bellevue Avenue, also known as "Millionaires' Row," stately mansions loom like fortresses behind gilded wrought-iron fences and towering stone walls.

But times have changed for these relics of Newport's Golden Age, which have names like Chateau-Sur-Mer, Marble House, Belcourt Castle.

Today, a dozen of the most opulent homes carry open invitations to anyone with the $6 to $7 price of admission. Busloads of sneakered, suntanned tourists are the most frequent guests.

Inheritance taxes and the enormous cost of upkeep have been the driving force behind much of the transition from private to public. As owners have died, heirs have turned the mansions over to preservationists who have promised to keep them safe from developers' blueprints and power saws.

One of the last to die was Newport socialite Edith Wetmore, who never married and died in 1966. She was well into her 80s when she made her first trip to the grocery store - a chauffeur-driven excursion from her palatial home to the new A&P about a mile away.

Accompanied by a friend who guided her through the aisles, helped her load the basket and led her to the checkout counter, she finally came to the cash register without a penny in her purse.

Wetmore, whose income was $6,000 a day, never even thought about carrying around money. The friend had to pay.

That says something about the lush world she came from, when turn-of-the-century society saw families like the Vanderbilts and Astors summering in 50-room "cottages" with household staffs that outnumbered occupants 10 to 1.

Inside the homes, floors of imported Italian marble and hardwood are covered with Persian carpets. Windows overlooking the Rhode Island Sound are draped in red velvet and walls are covered with spun silk.

Carved woodwork and plaster climb pillared walls and up spacious and winding stairways lit by huge crystal chandeliers.

They were the playhouses of vain and glorious business magnates who were inflated enough to pay homage to themselves: Bachelor Oliver Hazard Perry Belmont's initials "OB" were inlaid in silk wall coverings in the Belcourt Castle he built as a gentleman's retreat.

Other mansion owners etched family monograms in stained-glass windows, and struck regal poses for sculptors and painters, whose renditions of themselves they prominently displayed.

In Wetmore's day, 10-course meals were eaten off solid gold services and it's been said that one hostess saw fit to bar from her table people who had less than $5 million. Another would not serve those whose cottages, furnished, cost less than $1 million.

Caroline Schermerhorn, who married William Backhouse Astor in 1853 and became the undisputed Queen of American society, insisted on being called "The Mrs. Astor."

Their summer home was the Astors' Beechwood, now privately owned but open to the public. A costumed staff re-creates the Astors' lifestyle of the 1890s.

With the help of a Southern gentleman, Ward McAllister, Astor devised her famous "Four Hundred," a list of 213 families and individuals whose lineage could be traced back at least three generations. Four hundred also was the number of guests who could comfortably fit into the ballroom of her New York Home.

Some of the homes remain private, partly hidden behind ancient beech and black-walnut trees and guarded by padlocked gates. Still others have fallen into the hands of developers - condominium contractors - to the ire of the locals.

"Edith Wetmore was one of the last who had `John the Butler' and `Annie the Maid,' " says Harle Tinney, whose husband's family bought Belcourt Castle in 1956 and opened it for public tours a year later.

Harle and Donald Tinney now live in 25 rooms in the west and south wings of the second floor.

Harle Tinney says, "The Tinney family has had the best and the worst or both worlds. We've enjoyed the society aspect, but we all work, we're craftsmen.

"We have been into the kitchen," she adds with a laugh. "There were many, many estate owners who never stepped into the kitchen."

Eileen Slocum has watched the passage from private to public from her Harold Carter Brown House, a 100-year-old Gothic revival-style estate built by her uncle, a member of the family that established Brown University.

She is one of a diminishing number of year-round residents along Millionaires' Row.

Sterling silver, crystal and china lamps and vases, bronze and plaster statues and walls of leather-bound books fill the stately home the Slocums have occupied for 34 years.

About 800,000 tourists a year are herded through the mansions, many overseen by the Newport Preservation Society, ranking them the top tourist draw in the state.

"I felt very sad to see, one by one, the owners die," says Slocum. "But I feel the houses remain as monuments to them."