Yes, out-of-town tourists (including us) are partaking in the sort of bizarre activity of walking by mansions in awe, peering through the gates and wondering, “what the hell is it like to live in there?” Or, “I bet this home sits empty 95% of the time.”
A few older mansions are open to the public as museums, charging people to find out what it’s like to live as a rich person. I mean, I know it’s about the construction, architecture, and way of life in the late 1800s when many of these mansions were built, but it is pretty funny to think about.
The most visited and famous of these mansions is the Vanderbilt’s summer home called The Breakers. Construction of the The Breakers began in 1892 and was completed in 1895. Because the previous home on the estate had burnt down, the construction was very impressive, using steel trusses and making the boiler separate from the house and underground.
Well, no offense to the Preservation Society of Newport, Tyler and I sort of kind of maybe might of snuck our way onto the property. Before you judge, I want to say that it’s not like we climbed over a fence or planned a way to get in. We just took opportunity of their extremely wide entryway and the chaos of construction on the building’s (let’s be honest, it’s not a home) soon-to-be and controversial welcome center. We didn’t go into the house but we walked around the property and its massive back lawn, which wore me out so I took a catnap in the gardens.
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