Wildacre (1901) (Newport, Rhode Island)

USA / Rhode Island / Newport / Newport, Rhode Island / Ocean Avenue, 310
 house, place with historical importance, cottage, mansion / manor house / villa, interesting place
Wildacre, the Albert H. Olmsted House (1901; Irving Gill [San Diego], architect, and Olmsted Brothers, landscape architects):

Picturesquely sited on a rocky outcropping at the ocean’s edge, this is a rambling splayed-V-plan, 21⁄2-story, complex-cross-gable-roof, shingled house with uncoursed fieldstone foundation, highly inflected massing, principal entrance in a projecting steep-end-gable pavilion set at a 45° angle to the main block at its northeast corner, banked and individual 1-over-1 windows, large plate- glass windows on the south elevation, and 5 large fieldstone chimneys spread across the roofline; this highly picturesque house appears to emerge from the stone of its rugged site, and its naturalistic building materials and massing link it further to the natural and created landscape.

The house is complemented by much of the original Olmsted landscape as well as a 3-bay-façade hip-roof summer pavilion with a stone chimney at its east end, an octagonal plan gazebo east of the pavilion, and a garage/caretaker’s house north of the gazebo.

The influence of the California bungalow, which Gill knew well, is here conflated with the East Coast Shingle Style and Japonism into one of Ocean Drive’s most successful site-specific houses.
The introduction of this well-known California architect to Newport came through the Mason sisters, who wintered in San Diego at the Del Coronado Hotel and commissioned Gill to build their Newport House (1899-1902) at 180 Rhode Island Avenue, (now St. Michaels Country Day School) (NR) after its predecessor. Ellen Mason was an avid gardener who had engaged Frederick Law Olmsted as early as 1882 to organize the land around her summer house. The Masons, in turn, introduced Gill to the Olmsted siblings also enjoying a winter vacation at the Del. Albert Olmsted was a Hartford banker and half-brother of Frederick Law Olmsted. (5 contributing elements: 4 buildings, one site)

[bought in 1998 by Austrian shipping heiress Nortrud "Trudy" Haas, daughter of Fritz A. Albert, an influential Austrian businessman. Nortrud has been active in preservation and restoration projects in the city of Newport, Rhode Island]
www.boston.com/lifestyle/house/articles/2008/09/04/in_n...
and www.newport-now.com/articles/hdc-oks-restoration-of-his...
Nearby cities:
Coordinates:   41°27'23"N   71°20'15"W

Comments

  • Wildacre, the Newport home of Campbell’s Soup heiress Mrs. Dorrance Hamilton, is on the market with a listing price of $15,750,000. http://www.thenewportbuzz.com/wildacre-estate-listed-for-15-75-million/75140/
  • Sold for $14,000,000.00 just the other day. Dodo has built a new home on Beacon Hill Road.
This article was last modified 9 years ago