Newport’s strangest Gilded Age mansion had stables on the ground floor and one very odd man above

Newport’s strangest Gilded Age story

Newport, Rhode Island has no shortage of Gilded Age mansions, but Belcourt of Newport on Bellevue Avenue is the one that makes people stop and read the description twice.

At roughly 50,000 square feet and 60 rooms, it’s the third-largest mansion in Newport, and it was built in 1894 with the entire first floor dedicated to horses and carriages. The man who ordered it had one bedroom.

What happened next is a story about money, horses, a scandalous marriage, a $1,000 sale, and a ghost or two.

A 33-year-old bachelor with a very specific vision

Oliver Hazard Perry Belmont was 33 years old, unmarried, and heir to a banking fortune when he hired architect Richard Morris Hunt to build him a home.

Hunt based the design on the Louis XIII hunting lodge at Versailles. Construction ran from 1891 to 1894 and cost $3.2 million, which works out to about $80 million today.

Belmont was a serious horseman, and the Belmont Stakes bears his father’s name, so it made sense that his horses lived better than most people. The stables took the whole ground floor.

Then Alva Vanderbilt moved in and changed everything

In 1896, Belmont married his neighbor Alva Vanderbilt, who had just divorced William Kissam Vanderbilt and owned Marble House a few doors down on Bellevue Avenue.

Alva was not a woman who tolerated horses in her dining room.

She converted the carriage room into a banquet hall and reshaped the interiors for entertaining on a Gilded Age scale.

The bachelor pad built around one man’s love of horses became one of Newport’s grandest social spaces, almost overnight.

The ballroom that looks like a Gothic cathedral

The French Gothic-style ballroom is the room that stays with you.

The vaulted ceilings climb about 35 feet overhead, and enormous stained-glass windows line the walls, many carrying the Belmont coat of arms. Suits of armor stand at attention around the room. Swords hang from the walls. A pipe organ sits in a loft above it all.

The whole thing looks more like a medieval castle than a summer home, and that contrast is exactly what makes it worth the walk upstairs.

Secret doors, carved mottos, and a Paris staircase

The Grand Staircase was modeled after the stairs at the Cluny Museum in Paris, and the Francis I Renaissance-style Grand Hall served as the main gathering space when the Belmonts entertained.

Woven through all of it are 14 secret doors, tucked into walls and hidden behind panels throughout the house.

The family motto, “Sans Crainte,” meaning “Without Fear,” is carved above fireplaces and doorways in room after room. You’ll keep spotting it as you move through the house.

Newport’s first standing shower and a 70-foot balcony

Belmont’s bathroom held Newport’s first standing shower, which was a novelty when the mansion opened in 1894.

The English Library came later, added around 1910 by architect John Russell Pope, with a ceiling modeled after the Long Gallery at Haddon Hall in England.

The central courtyard runs about 80 by 40 feet, framed in Norman-style half-timber construction. A wrought-iron balcony stretches 70 feet across the second-floor exterior.

Every detail here was built to impress, and most of them still do.

The mansion sold for $1,000 and sat empty for years

Oliver Belmont died in 1908, and the mansion drifted through several owners after that. By 1940, it sold for $1,000 and sat largely empty.

The Tinney family bought it in 1956 for $25,000 and started filling it with their own collection of antiques, reopening it for public tours in 1957 under the name Belcourt Castle.

For decades, it was the only Newport mansion where a private owner lived inside while also welcoming the public, which gave tours a different kind of energy than the formal Preservation Society properties down the street.

A $15 million restoration pulls it back from the edge

In 2012, Rhode Island entrepreneur Carolyn Rafaelian bought Belcourt and put about $15 million into bringing it back.

The deteriorated roof came off and was rebuilt. Grand rooms were restored. Geothermal and solar energy systems went in.

The mansion reopened for tours in 2014 under its current name, Belcourt of Newport, and the restoration earned a Rhody Award for Historic Preservation in 2018.

What you walk through today is close to what Oliver Belmont saw when it was finished in 1894.

Guided tours that feel more like storytelling than a script

Tours run about 60 minutes and take you through the grand halls, the ballroom, the library, and rooms that most visitors never expect.

The guides share the full arc of the mansion’s history, from the Belmonts to the $1,000 sale to the restoration.

People who’ve done both Belcourt and the Preservation Society mansions like The Breakers and Rosecliff tend to say Belcourt feels more personal.

It’s privately owned and independently run, and the difference shows in how the stories get told.

Ghost tours by candlelight in Newport’s most haunted house

Belcourt has carried the reputation of Newport’s most haunted house for a long time.

The 60-minute nighttime ghost tours move through darkened rooms while guides share accounts of reported paranormal activity tied to the mansion’s long history. Each visitor gets a battery-operated candle to carry.

The tours run year-round but draw the biggest crowds around Halloween, when the Gothic ballroom and shadowy hallways do most of the work without anyone saying a word.

A museum about Armenian life hidden inside the mansion

Inside Belcourt’s walls, you’ll also find the Museum of Life and Culture.

The current exhibit focuses on Armenian life and culture, with videos, photographs, and artifacts spread through dedicated rooms. Museum access comes with your guided tour ticket.

Beyond the regular tours, the mansion hosts concerts, speaker events, and social gatherings throughout the year, so depending on when you visit, you might walk into something more than just a history tour.

Marble House, the Cliff Walk, and everything else within reach

Belcourt sits on Bellevue Avenue alongside many of Newport’s most recognizable mansions.

Marble House, the home Alva Vanderbilt left when she moved into Belcourt with Oliver Belmont, is just a short walk away.

The Cliff Walk, a 3.5-mile path along the ocean edge behind the mansions, runs nearby and puts you right behind the properties you’ve been walking through.

Newport’s waterfront with its restaurants and shops is a short drive from Bellevue Avenue, so you can build a full day without much planning.

The mansion that tells Newport’s strangest story

Most of Newport’s mansions tell you about wealth. Belcourt tells you about a person.

It started as a place built around one man’s obsession with horses, became a grand social stage under one of the Gilded Age’s most forceful women, then spent decades empty before selling for less than a used car.

It has been restored, renamed, haunted, and reborn more than once.

No other mansion on Bellevue Avenue has lived quite this many lives, and that’s what you feel walking through it.

Visit Belcourt of Newport in Rhode Island

Belcourt of Newport sits at 657 Bellevue Avenue in Newport, Rhode Island. Guided tours run about 60 minutes and go Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays.

Ghost tours are also available if you want the after-dark version of the house. You can buy tickets online through the official website or at the door when you arrive.

Parking on-site is free.

Give yourself time before or after to walk Bellevue Avenue, because Marble House and several other mansions are within easy walking distance.

This article was created with AI assistance and human editing.

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