Wrentham House (Indian Spring) (Newport, Rhode Island)

USA / Rhode Island / Newport / Newport, Rhode Island / Ocean Avenue, 325
 house, place with historical importance, estate (manor / mansion land), mansion / manor house / villa, mock castle
Originally called Indian Spring, the granite-and-brownstone castle was a collaboration between two of the greatest designers of the day, landscape architect Fredrick Law Olmstead and architect Richard Morris Hunt, whose other Newport commissions included The Breakers, Cornelius Vanderbilt II's 70-room estate.

They designed the place in 1891 for J.R. Busk, who successfully defended the America's Cup with his boat, Mischief, a decade earlier. The 22-room, 14,400-square-foot house is in the middle of a complete restoration. The turreted mansion features eight bedrooms, including an 1,800-square-foot master suite with double marble baths and an adjacent study. Scattered throughout the mansion are 13 full baths, four half baths and 15 fireplaces.

Indian Spring, the Dorsheimer-Busk House (1887-92, 2006-07; Richard Morris Hunt [1887-92], architect):

A magnificently sited and sweeping 11⁄2-to-31⁄2-story, L-plan, high-hip-roof, random-course- ashlar Romanesque house with lower service wing, connected to the main block through a round-plan conical-roof 21⁄2-story tower, extending diagonally toward the northeast from the main block. The principal entrance, set within a low round-head relieving arch in a turreted projecting pavilion, is on the north elevation, which faces a large walled motor court; fenestration on the main block’s elevation facing the motor court is sparse, dominated by a large bank of windows west of the principal entrance and between the 1st and 2nd stories.

The house’s most striking aspect is its ocean-facing south elevation, dominated by a deep, broad-7-bay porch set within the mass of the main block between 2-story, circular- plan, conical roof low towers; the 3 central bays of the porch are centered on French doors, and 3 broad hip-roof dormers are symmetrically arranged on the sweeping roof above. French doors and dormers open from a central living space that rises two stories in height and dominates the plan; this may well be the progenitor of a series of other similarly-organized vacation houses with large central living spaces, not strictly the living hall, with fireplace as well as vertical and horizontal circulation, of the Queen Anne style (C.f. Cherry Creek Bungalow, now Normandie, 240 Ocean Avenue, and Near Sea, 200 Ocean Avenue).

Because of the abrupt change in grade, the hemicyclical west end of the main block rises 31⁄2 stories. The soft grey-pink hue of the walls foils the darker brownstone in the window surrounds, stringcourses, and modest modillion cornice. Random-course-ashlar chimneys rise from the main block at east and west ends as well as off center, and there is a large chimney at the east end of the service ell. The house is masterfully sited atop a rock outcropping, and both siting and design beautifully integrate building and site: the planting scheme here achieves significance, not only for what is planted but more importantly for what is not planted, with absence of foundation planting emphasizing the organic relationship between the natural and the created. To the northwest of the main house is a 11⁄2-story cross-gable-roof barn with a large cupola at the crossing of the ridgelines.

Planned originally for a similar rocky site on Beacon Hill Road in the King-Glover-Bradley Subdivision, this house began as a project in 1887 for William Edward Dorsheimer (1832-1888), who lived in an H.H. Richardson-designed house, which he had commissioned in the late 1860s, at 434 Delaware Avenue in Buffalo, NY (NR). Dorsheimer had worked closely with both Richardson and Frederick Law Olmsted, whom he brought to Buffalo to design the park system and whom he engaged for the Beacon Hill Road project. Richardson’s death in 1886 brought this commission to Hunt, to whom Dorsheimer specified a Romanesque design, an otherwise anomaly in Hunt’s work. Hunt was still in the project’s design phase when Dorsheimer himself died. By December of 1890, however, English-born yachtsman Joseph R. Busk had assumed the commission for the house with Hunt, but moved the project to this location. Busk also engaged the Olmsted firm to site the house and to landscape the grounds. The project was completed in the late summer of 1892.

Abandoned and left to decay for 40 years, the house was painstakingly restored from 2000-2007

This is the most consistently admired of all of Hunt’s work, receiving great praise from contemporary critics like Montgomery Schuyler and Marianna Griswold Van Rensselaer as well as contemporary scholars like Vincent Scully and Paul Baker. In discussions of late 19th-century Newport architecture it is inevitably—and usually favorably—compared with Peabody & Stearns’s Shamrock Cliff at 65 Ridge Road (q.v.). (3 contributing elements: 2 buildings, 1 site)
Wikipedia article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Morris_Hunt
Nearby cities:
Coordinates:   41°27'29"N   71°20'24"W

Comments

  • Oct. 2007--The price has been reduced from $17.5-million to $14.5-million.
  • ProJo article on the restoration 4/16/2008 - http://www.projo.com/generalassembly/EB_NPTMANSION16_04-16-08_RT9P6VB_v13.34ac1e0.html
  • link busted, gone to projo paid archives I suppose :(
This article was last modified 6 years ago