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The Gilded Age Palaces of Newport, RI (Zoom)

When Edith Wharton purchased her “Lands’ End” cottage in Newport, RI, she found it “incurably ugly” and immediately renovated it into a comfortable vacation home. But surrounding her, the small resort town of eclectic, shingle cottages developed into a row of American palaces, each outdoing the next. See nearly one hundred vintage and contemporary photographs and learn how Gilded Age “old” money–like the Astors and Goelets–tried to best the “new” wealthy–like the Vanderbilts and Belmonts, and how American Beaux-Arts architect Richard Morris Hunt, designed some of the most extravagant homes in the nation for them, many of which are public museums today.

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