Ker Avor (Newport, Rhode Island)

USA / Rhode Island / Newport / Newport, Rhode Island / Harrison Avenue, 275
 house, place with historical importance, cottage, interesting place
Ker Arvor, the Col Snowden A. Fahnestock House (1931-33; architect unknown):

A large stuccoed, U-plan, vernacular Louis XV Revival house with a 2½-story, 7-bay-façade high-hip-roof main block, articulated identically on both north and south elevations, flanked by low 1½-story mansard-roof hyphens to the east and west that connect to large 1½-story, 7-bay-deep, mansard-roof wings that extend south from each of the hyphens; the severe detail is limited to quoins framing the projecting central pavilions and the corners of the main block, wrought-iron balconies on the main block’s 2nd-story windows, console-framed dormers, and prominent chimneys on the ridgelines of the main block and the west wing.

The house is comfortably sited in a handsome landscape, published in Country Life in 1935, with an entrance drive that extends west from Harrison Avenue along the property’s northern edge to a right-angle turn south on axis with the principal entrance and then east across the façade to a motor court east of the east wing; a formal, axial garden extends south through and beyond the court defined by the flanking wings across a cusp-corner terrace and pool to a boxwood lined formal parterre.

Fahnestock (1886-1953) was a financier, first in New York and later in Washington, D.C., who served with distinction in World War I, earning the Croix de Guerre. His family began summering in Newport in 1900 (see 35 Chastellux Avenue); he married Newport resident Helen Morgan Horan in 1920, and his immediate family rented seasonally in Newport, beginning in 1926, before building this house. The house was named for the French village where Fahnestock’s regiment was quartered during the war.

Modeled after La Lanterne, Versailles.
Nearby cities:
Coordinates:   41°27'50"N   71°20'59"W

Comments

  • Was this house owned later by George Morrison, president of General Baking ?
  • The architects were Clinton & Russel. Construction 1930-31
This article was last modified 14 years ago