Edgehill (Newport, Rhode Island)

USA / Rhode Island / Newport / Newport, Rhode Island / Beacon Hill Road, 31
 house, place with historical importance, cottage, estate (manor / mansion land), mansion / manor house / villa
Edgehill, George Gordon King House (1887-88, 1902-04, 1907, 1978-80, 2006; McKim, Mead & White, architects):

A large, rambling 21⁄2-story random-course-ashlar stone-and-shingle house with a stretched-rectangular-plan main block picturesquely intersected by curving conical-roof towers and projecting cross gables. Dramatically sited at the crest of the hill on the west side of the road, it overlooks the rolling landscape—out of which it almost seems organically to emerge—that extends north and west to Narragansett Bay.

King (1859-1922) was a co-developer with his mother, Mary Augusta Leroy King (1829-1905), of the King-Glover-Bradley Plat (1884-85) in which this stands, on a portion of the land that he inherited from his father, Edward King (1815-1875). King summered with his mother at the family house on Spring Street through the 1880s. He spent the summers of 1889 and 1890 in Europe before his marriage in 1891 to Anne McKenzie Coats (sister of Alfred M. Coats [see 20 Brenton Road]). The Kings spent the summers of 1892, 1893, 1896, and 1898 here but stayed with his mother in 1897; after he sold the house in 1899 to Ellen W. Duryea, it seems to have been a summer rental for most of the early 20th century. Arthur Curtiss James (see [60] Beacon Hill Road) owned the house after 1911, when it was the summer home of New Yorker E. Hayward Ferry and his family.

This is one of the best of McKim, Mead & White’s 1880s shingled houses; like its slightly earlier neighbor, Berry Hill (see 25 Hammersmith Road), this was planned by one of the developers of this plat, and thus exemplifies their vision of an architectural/landscape æsthetic at once both picturesque and sublime. (2 contributing elements: 1 building, 1 site)

Robert Yarnall Richie aerial photo ca. 1932-1934 - digitalcollections.smu.edu/u?/ryr,382
Nearby cities:
Coordinates:   41°28'4"N   71°19'55"W

Comments

  • In 1976, New England Properties Inc. acquired the former Arthur Curtiss James estate for use as an alcoholic rehabilitation center known as Edgehill Newport. The estate at one time or another contained four structures: a palatial mansion named Edgehill, erected originally between 1887 and 1888 by McKim, Mead andWhite for the Newport philanthropist George Gordon King; Beacon Hill House, completed for Arthur Curtiss James in 1910 by architects Howells and Stokes and demolished in 1967; Vedimar, the guest house for the preceding, completed in 1910 by architects Atterbury and Phelps and demolished in 1975; and the Swiss Village, a model farm added to the grounds of Vedimar in 1923. Pushing ahead against objections from many neighboring landowners, the Center opened in 1980 and provided much-needed services with slow expansion of capacity and facilities. The Center closed in 1997 to return to private use; two years later, the new owner razed a modern clinic facility that had been erected by Edgehill Newport beside the Edgehill mansion. (from Newport: A Concise History C.P.B. Jefferys)
  • [ Edgehill Estate - A.L. (Les) and Carol C. Ballard of Houston, Texas ]
This article was last modified 12 years ago