Hammersmith Farm (Newport, Rhode Island)

USA / Rhode Island / Newport / Newport, Rhode Island / Harrison Avenue, 225
 house, farm, cottage, mansion / manor house / villa, interesting place
Hammersmith Farm, the Auchincloss House (1887-89 et seq.; Robert H. Robertson [New York], architect; Olmsted Brothers [1897-1946] and Boris V. Timchenko [Washington, D.C., 1959], landscape architects):

An ample almost-40-acre country house and farm with 3 houses, 3 barns, 2 sheds, greenhouse and pumphouse near the main entrance. The principal entrance is through brick-pier wrought-iron gates on Harrison Avenue, and to the northeast of this entrance is a low brick pump house, partially below ground, with gable roof supported on large wood brackets and brick corbels at the gable end and a large chimney at the ridgeline’s east end. The prominently sited 2½-story main house with a large main block to the west, 1-story conservatory at the northwest corner, and a lower 2½-story service wing to the east is a large but emphatically horizontal building atop a stone platform with brick 1st story and shingled 2nd story and attic, principal entrance near the south end of the east elevation within and ample pedimented porte-cochère, single and grouped double-hung sash arranged asymmetrically around the building, polygonal-plan turreted pavilion at the southeast corner of the main block, wide-eave low hip roof with low-hip-roof dormers emerging above all four elevations, 5 prominent brick chimneys on the main block and 1 small chimney on the service wing; large terraces extend at grade to the north and step downhill to the south and west toward a formal garden with pergola. Northeast of the main house are a 2½-story shingled Foursquare house with prominent chimney and 1-story addition on the northeast side, a low 1-story brick-and-glass greenhouse, and a shingled 1½-story cross-gambrel-roof house with large center chimney and 2-stall garage to its north connected to the house by a breezeway. West of this group of buildings are 3 wide, shallow, 1-story barn-garage structures with cupolas atop their hip roofs. Stone walls traverse the property.

New York businessman John Winthrop Auchincloss (1853-1938) purchased the 97-acre Brenton Farm, which then included the farmhouse next door at number 203 (q.v.) in 1887 and engaged Robertson, who designed both city and country houses for many prominent New Yorkers, to design this house. Auchincloss sold the property to his brother Hugh D. Auchincloss (1855-1913), whose wife first engaged the Olmsteds to landscape the property beginning in the late 1890s, a role the firm continued to play into the 1940s. The property devolved to his son Hugh D. Auchincloss, Jr, (1897-1976), whose 3rd wife was Janet Lee, ex-wife of Jack Bouvier. The Auchinclosses engaged Timchenko to design the terrace garden immediately adjacent to the house.

Mrs Auchincloss’s daughter Jacqueline Lee Bouvier (1929-1995) married Senator John F. Kennedy (1917-1963) in September 1953, and their wedding reception was held in both house and gardens. During the early 1960s, this served as an informal “Summer White House” for President Kennedy and his family—ironically literally a stone’s throw away from adjacent Fort Adams (NHL), where the Commandant’s House enjoyed similar use by President and Mrs Eisenhower, Kennedy’s immediate predecessor.

The State of Rhode Island acquired the property in the mid-1970s, and it saw use as a museum and event venue for 20 years before returning to private ownership.
Wikipedia article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hammersmith_Farm
Nearby cities:
Coordinates:   41°28'9"N   71°20'44"W

Comments

  • This house used to be open for tours. Several years ago it was purchased privately. I also had my senior prom here!
  • How much it was sold anyway, it's probably the most expensive house in Newport
  • In 1999, it sold for over $8 million to Peter Kiernan, a managing director at Goldman Sachs, who converted the home back to private use
  • Standard Oil money - Hugh Dudley Auchincloss, Jr. (August 15, 1897 – November 20, 1976) was an American stockbroker and lawyer who became the second husband of Janet Lee Bouvier, the mother of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis. Auchincloss was born at Hammersmith Farm in Newport, Rhode Island. He was the son of Hugh Dudley Auchincloss (1858–1913), a merchant and financier, and Emma Brewster Jennings, daughter of Oliver B. Jennings, a founder of Standard Oil.
  • The State of Rhode Island never owned Hammersmith Farm and opened it up for tours, the Auchincloss family owned it and a private group of businessmen rented it and ran it as a tour venue with the furniture loaned by the family to them.
This article was last modified 12 years ago