Gilded Age mansions line the Bellevue Avenue Historic District in Newport, Rhode Island, a place almost exclusively residential. These houses were built as summer retreats around the turn of the 20th century by the extremely wealthy, including members of the Vanderbilt and Astor families, and many represent pioneering work in the architectural styles of the time by major American architects. In 1976 the district was declared a National Historic Landmark, and several mansions within it are also individually so designated; a number of them are open to the public as museums, and the whole district has become one of Newport’s major tourist attractions.
You are in a 606-acre (245 ha) area bounded by Block Island Sound and Narragansett Bay to the south and east, Spring Street and Coggeshall Avenue to the west, and Memorial Boulevard to the north, taking in the southeastern quarter of the developed portions of the city on the southwestern neck of Aquidneck Island. Bellevue Avenue itself runs north–south for over two miles through the middle of this ensemble of lawns, carriageways, and façades, with that avenue and the water waiting beyond you.