Laurelawn (ca. 1880) (Newport, Rhode Island)

USA / Rhode Island / Newport / Newport, Rhode Island / Bellevue Avenue, 589
 house, place with historical importance, cottage
c. 1880
Balitmore widow Frances Murdock hired prominent Boston architects Peabody & Sterns to build this stick style cottage. In 1882, Edward Padelford of Savannah, GA purchased the home with his father's cotton fortune. The house has had several owners and remains a private residence.

most recently - Thomas Henry Quinn, a partner with D.C.'s Venable law firm - "Almost a hundred years before Thomas Quinn made Laurelawn his own, it belonged to a Baltimore family named Murdock. Eager to escape the heat and rampant malaria of the mid-Atlantic region, the Murdocks sailed north to Narragansett Bay to take up seasonal residence in one of nine cottages designed by the young Boston-based architects Robert Swan Peabody and John Goddard Stearns."

www.washingtonlife.com/backissues/archives/02sept/newpo...
Nearby cities:
Coordinates:   41°27'43"N   71°18'27"W

Comments

  • In the 1950s the house was owned by two ailing sisters who eventually left the property abandoned. In the 1960s, homeless "hippies" entered through the windows and lived in the house with no water or electricity for months or years. The damage was extensive and the house was sold by a probate attorney to Ralph and Catherine Gunning, who worked to restore the house themselves and rent out portions. The house was purchased in the 1980s by DC lobbyist (and Rhode Island native) Thomas Quinn as a summer house for the Quinn family.
This article was last modified 11 years ago