"Armsea Hall"/"Annandale Farm" (Newport, Rhode Island)

 residence, historical layer / disappeared object

A large porticoed Palladian villa dominating the lower East Passage of Narragansett Bay, Armsea Hall was New York architect Francis Laurens Vinton Hoppin’s Beaux-Arts masterpiece in Newport. Designed for General Francis Vinton Greene, the villa’s Neoclassical central corps was flanked by two lower projecting wings with Doric colonnades.

The estate, with its noted rose gardens, passed within two years to Charles Frederick Hoffman then to Zelia K. Hoffman. Subsequently acquired in 1945 by Mrs. Aymar Johnson for $14,000, the palatial estate, which abutted the Auchincloss family’s Hammersmith Farm, the childhood summer home of Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy, was proposed as the official summer White House in 1962. President Kennedy privately leased the estate for his planned 1964 summer season. His assassination precluded the rental and Armsea Hall was sold in 1965 for $150,000 for a planned resort. In 1967, the property was purchased at a mortgagee sale for $195,000 and in 1968 was sold a final time for $212,000 for a residential subdivision.

The villa was demolished in 1969 and modern homes subsequently built on the site.

Aka Annandale Farm

www.pinkpillbox.com/annandale.htm