The Reefs /Sea-Cliffe (1852) (Newport, Rhode Island)

 estate (manor / mansion land), historical layer / disappeared object

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The Reefs - Wolfe-Knower-Whitney Estate 1853
Architect: Joseph Collins Wells (1814-1860); alterations by Ogden Codman, Jr. (1863-1951)
Located on Bellevue Avenue NE of Bancroft Avenue
Demolished: 1942

Built forJohn David Wolfe (1792-1872) of New York, this fine Italianate villa was one of the pre-Civil War showplaces of Newport. It was sold to T.W. Phinney in 1858, it was subsequently purchased by John Knower of New York. His cousin, Sarah French, sold the estate to Mr. and Mrs. Harry Payne Whitney (née Gertrude Vanderbilt) in 1896. The Reefs was then encased in stucco and renovated by the architect Ogden Codman as Whitney Cottage. Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney added a Shingle Style sculpture studio on the cliffs, where she studied under the tutelage of Hendrik Christian Andersen. This studio was swept away in the 1938 hurricane and replaced with a yellow brick moderne style version by Noel and Miller, architects, in 1939. In December of 1942, while occupied by the family of Mrs. Whitney’s sister, Countess Laszlo Széchényi, the villa caught fire. The cottage was demolished, the surviving gatehouse sold and moved to Ruggles Avenue, and the land acquired by Mr. S. Griswold Flagg of Radnor, Pennsylvania.

The Flagg family in turn sold the estate, with Gertrude Whitney’s surviving studio, to Reginald Rives, who in 1953 had a Georgian style red brick house built on the lower slope of the lot by architect Frederick Rhinelander King, 'Seacliff' (1953).

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