Edna Villa is the other name for the Isaac Bell House at 70 Perry Street, on the corner with Bellevue Avenue in Newport, Rhode Island. This historic house was designed by the New York firm of McKim, Mead, and White and is regarded as one of the country’s outstanding examples of Shingle Style architecture. Built during the Gilded Age, when Newport was the summer resort of choice for some of America’s wealthiest families, the house is now designated a National Historic Landmark.
Isaac Bell Jr., a successful cotton broker and investor and the brother-in-law of James Gordon Bennett Jr., hired Charles Follen McKim, William R. Mead, and Stanford White to create his summer cottage. Construction took place between 1881 and 1883. The architects of this house were already known here for the Newport Casino, later for Boston’s Central Library, and elsewhere for Pennsylvania Station in New York City.
Shingle Style itself was pioneered by Henry Hobson Richardson in his William Watts Sherman House, also in Newport, and is characterized here by the extensive use of wooden shingles. Notice those shingles and the house's setting on Bellevue Avenue right beside you.