Chateau-sur-Mer at 474 Bellevue Avenue was one of the first grand Bellevue Avenue mansions of the Gilded Age in Newport. Picture William Shepard Wetmore, a merchant in the Old China Trade originally of St. Albans, Vermont, who completed this Italianate villa in 1852. Seth C. Bradford, the architect and builder, raised these walls in Fall River Granite, and today the Preservation Society of Newport County cares for the house as a museum.
Its grand scale and lavish parties helped usher in Newport’s Gilded Age; it remained the most palatial residence here until the arrival of the Vanderbilt houses in the 1890s. Inside and out it is regarded as a landmark of Victorian architecture, furniture, wallpapers, ceramics, and stenciling. Wetmore died here on June 16, 1862, leaving his fortune to his son, George Peabody Wetmore; George married Edith Keteltas in 1869.
In the 1870s the Wetmores departed on an extended trip to Europe and left architect Richard Morris Hunt to remodel and redecorate the house. Notice the granite facade, the sweep of Bellevue Avenue, and the details that tell these stories right beside you.