Gothic Revival gables crown Kingscote, the mansion and house museum at the corner of Bowery Street and Bellevue Avenue in Newport, Rhode Island. Designed by Richard Upjohn and built in 1839, it was one of the first summer “cottages” constructed here and is now a National Historic Landmark. The house was later remodelled and extended by George Champlin Mason and, after that, by Stanford White.
Before the Kings owned it, George Noble Jones—owner of the El Destino and Chemonie cotton plantations in Florida—built this wooden house along what was then a farm path known as Bellevue Avenue. As an early example of the Gothic Revival, Kingscote displays an irregular, busy roofline with many gables and chimneys and elaborate Gothic detailing. Originally it was painted a beige mixed with sand, a finish that gave the wood the textured appearance of sandstone.
The Jones family left at the outbreak of the American Civil War and the house was sold to William Henry King, an Old China Trade merchant, in 1864; King’s family retained it until 1972, when it was given to the Preservation Society of Newport County. Picture that busy roofline and Bellevue Avenue stretching out beside you.