Berry Hill (1885) (Newport, Rhode Island)

 house, place with historical importance, estate (manor / mansion land)

Berry Hill was designed by McKim, Mead & White, architects;( Frederick Law Olmsted, landscape architect; Samuel Parsons, Jr, Calvert Vaux, and Charles Sprague Sargent, landscape consultants):

The house was originally built on spec by John Glover who sold it to William Bruce Howe in 1901.

A 23½-acre parcel with house, outbuildings, gardens, internal system of paths and roads, and natural and cultivated landscapes, Berry Hill epitomizes the naturalistic development planned in the early 1880s for this central portion of the Ocean Drive neighborhood. The main house is typical of the firm’s country houses of the late 1880s: a 2½-story rectangular-plan contained mass with random-course-ashlar foundation and walls, regularly punctuated by windows of varying size and configuration; an ell with semicircular-plan end extends from the main block’s southeast corner, a 2nd story porch is set within the mass of the building at the northwest corner, a broad terrace connects the projecting entrance porch on the north elevation with a wrap-around porch at the southwest corner, and a steep gable roof with steep-roof dormers and 3 tall, random-course ashlar chimneys with multiple chimney pots caps the building. The main house faces a large circular drive, reached by a circuitous main drive entered down the hill through a gate near the intersection of Hammersmith and Beacon Rock Roads. Outbuildings include a 3 cottages, 2 barns, and a greenhouse deep within the property as well as a stable and tool house adjacent to and visible from Hammersmith Road.

Within the King-Glover-Bradley Subdivision of 1883, planned by Frederick Law Olmsted, Berry Hill occupies what were originally 5 lots and portions of 2 others. The Olmsted firm sited the main house and planned the roads that lead to it from the public rights of way. John Glover commissioned McKim, Mead & White to design that house and sold it almost immediately to New Yorkers Walter and Mary Ann Bruce Howe. The Howe family developed the property over the succeeding 50 years in consultation with the leading landscape architects and horticulturists of the day. The property remains largely intact and reflects 120 years of residential occupation. One of the largest individually held parcels within the district, this property’s preservation, both of buildings and open space, is critical to maintaining the historic and visual integrity of the district, all the more so because of its adjacency to the LeRoy King House, Indian Spring.

Sold in 2010 for $5M and the new owner "plans to restore the property and protect the historical integrity of the house in a sensitive way while making it comfortable for modern living".