Forget a lone Christmas tree, front door wreath, and even a slew of dangling baubles. For seriously dazzling holiday decorations, head instead to two Newport, Rhode Island, mansions meticulously dolled up for the season.
The Preservation Society of Newport County decks out The Breakers and Marble House with lights, garlands, sumptuous floral arrangements, trumpeting angels, and whimsical doodads. “We also do any mantel pieces, balustrades, hearths, foyers, tables—everything gets decorated,” says Jim Donahue, curator of historic landscapes and horticulture at the society, which operates the house museums. Because these summer domains never housed a Yuletide turkey dinner, there’s no need to make it look historic, he says: “We’re not celebrating the Vanderbilts roasting chestnuts.”
Yet each room open during Holidays at the Newport Mansions (November 23-January 1) matches its design, using coordinated colors, style, and a sense of history. The belle of The Breakers’s Great Hall is a 15-foot tree composed of more than 150 poinsettas that complements the room’s classic Italian palazzo style—rich, ornamental plasterwork, formal columns, and gleaming marble floor. Last year, the tree in Cornelius Vanderbilt’s bedroom bore train-related ornaments and top hats, evoking his leadership of the New York Central Railroad and social prominence. In the Marble House’s foyer, another huge conifer is loaded with gold and silver ornaments and flanked by pale poinsettas, while a mammoth nearby wreath bears a bright, bling-gold bow. Donahue, however, does draw the line at kitschy staging, as in piles of fake presents and Santa Claus stand-ins. “These are house museums, and I like it to look clean,” he explains. “Not hokey.”
Tickets to Holidays at the Newport Mansions (obtained through newportmansions.org) entitle one to wander these ornate interiors sporting their 28 adorned trees, amid the usual displays of antiques, art, and furnishings of the period, through guided and/or self-guided tours. Visitors thus learn about the mansions’ owners and history, too, in addition to enjoying the holiday extravagance.
A separate ticket is required for the fifth annual Sparkling Lights at The Breakers. This enchanting half-mile walk (fine for pedestrians, but not strollers or wheelchairs) passes specimen trees ablaze with colored lights and the dramatically uplit mansion as it winds through the newly restored garden landscape. The whole oceanfront scene offers a joyful, Disneyesque glow from which the Vanderbilts themselves might have shrunk. Or maybe not. “We use the sites for celebrating the holidays, not interpreting them for the Gilded Age,” says Donahue. Every room is different—and fresh. That’s what makes visiting these places pleasurable: an aesthetic treat, a decorating feat. “It all has a contemporary feel,” he agrees. “We don’t just stick with red and green.”
