Vaughan to Newport: the Gilded Age mansions by chauffeured car

Newport, the cottages and the cliff

Newport is the town at the southern tip of Aquidneck Island in Narragansett Bay where the Vanderbilts, the Astors and the Oelrichs built their summer houses in the 1890s and called them cottages — the Breakers, Cornelius Vanderbilt II's seventy-room Italian palazzo on the cliff; Marble House, his brother William's Versailles of five hundred thousand cubic feet of marble; Rosecliff, where The Great Gatsby was filmed; the Elms, Rough Point, Chateau-sur-Mer and the rest, ten of them kept by the Preservation Society and toured with audio guides — with the Cliff Walk running three and a half miles along the ocean below their lawns, Ocean Drive's ten miles past the later estates to Brenton Point, Bellevue Avenue's shops between the gates, the International Tennis Hall of Fame in the 1880 Newport Casino with the country's only public grass courts, Bowen's and Bannister's wharves on the harbour where the America's Cup yachts moored for fifty years, the Touro Synagogue of 1763 — the country's oldest — and the colonial town's streets around it, and Fort Adams's lawn, where the Newport Folk Festival and the Newport Jazz Festival fill the last weekends of July and August. Vaughan couples book the mansions weekend; Vaughan families add it to Boston or Cape Cod, ninety minutes from both. The Discover Newport site has the town; the border guide has the bridge.

The road

From Thornhill the QEW, the Lewiston–Queenston Bridge, the Thruway to Albany, the Massachusetts Turnpike to Sturbridge, I-84 and I-90 to Providence's ring, I-95 and Route 138 east across the Jamestown and Newport bridges — the Newport Bridge's two-mile span over the bay with the harbour below is the arrival — eleven and two-thirds hours by the estimate and twelve with the booth and stops, two days with an Albany or Saratoga night; or ninety minutes from Boston by I-93 and Route 24, or from the Cape over the Bourne Bridge and I-195. The Sprinter carries two couples or a family; the Premium Sedan a couple for the weekend.

The mansions, in the right order

The Preservation Society's ticket covers the houses and a family does three in a day: the Breakers first at nine before the coaches — the Great Hall's forty-five-foot ceiling, the dining room's gold, the kitchen's copper, the children's audio tour that the Society made for them; Marble House at 11:30 for the Gold Room and the Chinese Tea House on the cliff, where Alva Vanderbilt held her suffrage rallies; lunch on Bellevue Avenue; the Elms at 2 for the servants' tour of the kitchens, the coal tunnel and the roof — the tour the children like best; Rosecliff's ballroom at 4 if there is time, or Rough Point, Doris Duke's house on the Cliff Walk with her camels' portraits and her Newport Restoration Foundation's story. The Society's site has the combination tickets and the houses' seasons; the Breakers is open year-round and the others from spring to the Christmas tours.

The Cliff Walk and Ocean Drive

The Cliff Walk runs three and a half miles from Memorial Boulevard's Easton's Beach south along the cliff's top between the ocean and the mansions' back lawns — paved past the Breakers and Rosecliff, then rocks and scrambles to Bailey's Beach at the end — and a family walks the paved half from the Forty Steps to Marble House's Chinese Tea House with the chauffeur collecting at Ruggles Avenue; Ocean Drive's ten miles from Bellevue Avenue's end past Bailey's Beach, the later estates, Brenton Point State Park's kite-flying lawn, Castle Hill's lighthouse and the inn's Adirondack chairs on the lawn, and Fort Adams to the harbour is the SUV's late-afternoon drive with the family at the windows and the sunset from Castle Hill's lawn. The Discover Newport site has the walk's current condition, since the storms close sections.

The Tennis Hall of Fame and Bellevue Avenue

The Newport Casino of 1880 on Bellevue Avenue — Stanford White's shingle-style club where the first US National Championships were played in 1881 — holds the International Tennis Hall of Fame's museum and thirteen grass courts that the public may book, the country's only ones, with the Hall of Fame Open tournament in July on the ATP's grass swing; a Vaughan tennis family books an hour on the grass in whites and the museum's afternoon, and Bellevue Avenue's shops, the Audrain Automobile Museum's collection and the Redwood Library of 1747, the country's oldest lending library, are the walk between the mansions.

The harbour, the wharves and the colonial town

Bowen's Wharf and Bannister's Wharf are the harbour's restaurants and shops in the old warehouses — the Black Pearl's chowder, the Clarke Cooke House, the Mooring — with the schooners' harbour sails (the Madeleine, the Adirondack II) and the America's Cup 12-metre yachts' afternoon sails for a family that wants the water; Thames Street's shops run the waterfront; the colonial town around Washington Square — the Colony House of 1739, the Touro Synagogue, Trinity Church's 1726 steeple, the White Horse Tavern of 1673, the country's oldest — is the morning walk with the Newport Historical Society's tours. Fort Adams across the harbour is the 1824 fortress with tours of its tunnels and the festivals' lawn.

The festivals

The Newport Folk Festival on the last weekend of July and the Newport Jazz Festival on the first weekend of August fill Fort Adams's lawn with ten thousand a day — Dylan went electric here in 1965, and the folk festival's tickets sell out within hours of release in the winter without the lineup announced; a Vaughan group of six books the festival weekend a year ahead with the festivals' site for the tickets, the Sprinter for the drive and the fort's shuttle from the town's lots, and a Newport or Middletown hotel that the travel desk holds in January.

The weekend, in shape

Friday from Boston's hotel at 9, Route 24 and the Sakonnet River bridge, Newport's Hotel Viking on the hill or the Chanler at the Cliff Walk's start by 10:45, the colonial town's walk and the White Horse Tavern's lunch, the Tennis Hall of Fame at 2, Bellevue Avenue, the harbour's sunset sail at 6 and Bowen's Wharf dinner; Saturday the Breakers at 9, Marble House at 11:30, Bellevue's lunch, the Elms' servants' tour at 2, the Cliff Walk's paved half at 4, Ocean Drive and Castle Hill's lawn at 6, the Clarke Cooke House; Sunday Rough Point at 10, Fort Adams' tour at noon, the SUV at 1:30 for the Cape's Bourne Bridge or Boston's Logan. Two nights, the Sprinter or the SUV on daily hire inside the New England week, one number in the booking engine.

What the chauffeur replaces

Twelve hours from Vaughan as a driver, split over two days, or the ninety minutes from Boston and the Cape with the Newport Bridge's toll; Bellevue Avenue's parking between the mansions, which is the town's July problem; Ocean Drive's ten miles with a family looking at the sea rather than the road; the Cliff Walk's two ends, which a dropped-and-collected family walks one way; and the festival weekend's lots. For a couple the Premium Sedan is the Gilded Age weekend's own indulgence; for two couples or a family in the Sprinter it divides.

Seasons

June for the mansions before the crowds and the Newport Flower Show at Rosecliff; July for the Tennis Hall of Fame Open and the Folk Festival, August for the Jazz Festival and the harbour at its fullest, with the hotels doubled and booked by winter; September for the boat show, the warm bay and the empty Cliff Walk — the town's best month; late November through New Year for the mansions' Christmas tours, when the Breakers, the Elms and Marble House are decorated and lit, the winter version Vaughan couples book with a Boston Christmas.

Pairing it

Newport pairs with Boston ninety minutes north as the city week's weekend, with Cape Cod ninety minutes east as the beach week's mansions day, with Albany and Saratoga as the drive's splits, and with New York three hours southwest by I-95 for the family that ends in Manhattan.

The mansions day, in order, for two couples

Two couples from Kleinburg in the SUV from the Chanler at 8:45: the Breakers' doors at nine with the audio guide — the Great Hall, the morning room's platinum panels, the dining room, the kitchen, the loggia over the ocean — until 10:45; the Cliff Walk from the Breakers' back gate south to Marble House's Chinese Tea House, a mile with the ocean below, the SUV meeting them at the tea house's gate at 11:30; Marble House's Gold Room and Alva's story until 12:45; Bellevue Avenue's lunch at the Tennis Hall of Fame's La Forge; the Elms' servants' tour at 2:30 — the coal tunnel, the kitchens, the roof — until 3:45; Rough Point's Doris Duke at 4:15; Ocean Drive at 5:30 with Castle Hill's lawn chairs and the sunset over the bay at 7; the Clarke Cooke House at 8. Four houses, a walk and a drive that a couple in a rental car does three of, because Bellevue Avenue's lots are the town's July argument.

Fort Adams, the schooners and the water

Fort Adams's guided tour walks the 1824 fortress's tunnels, its ramparts and its parade ground — the largest coastal fort in the country, the festivals' lawn — and the Sail Newport centre beside it rents the boats and gives the lessons; the schooner Madeleine's afternoon sail from Bannister's Wharf and the 12-metre America's Cup yachts' two-hour sails, where the family takes a turn on the winches of a boat that raced for the Cup, are the harbour's hours, and the Discover Newport site has the sailing schedules. The Newport Bridge's span from the water, with the town behind, is the photograph the sail is for.

Costs, plainly

The Newport weekend is two nights inside a New England daily hire in the booking engine, or a return with the splits' nights; the hotel, the mansions' tickets, the grass court and the sail are the family's own, and the 48-hour exemption covers Bellevue Avenue's shops. Against the fare are twelve hours over two days as a driver, or the ninety minutes from Boston with the Newport Bridge's toll, Bellevue's parking between the houses and Ocean Drive's ten miles unwatched; a couple books the Premium Sedan as the weekend's own indulgence, and two couples or a family in the Sprinter divide it.

Booking it

Book the weekend inside a New England daily hire, or a return from your Vaughan address with the split's nights; tell us the hotel, the mansions' day, the festival if it matters, the grass court's hour, the seats and every passenger's citizenship for the bridge, and the chauffeur confirms the plan the evening before.

Book the Newport weekend