1886: Cornelius Vanderbilt built his children an oceanfront playhouse; it remains the only surviving structure from the original Breakers estate

Newport, Rhode Island, became a summer retreat for wealthy American families during the Gilded Age, many of whom built grand seaside residences they called “cottages,” as described by The Breakers’ official website. One of the best-known is The Breakers, a mansion on Ochre Point that is now open to visitors. A wooden house stood on the property before the present mansion was built and one small building from that earlier time is still standing: a children’s playhouse.Cornelius Vanderbilt II’s 1885 purchase and the playhouse built in 1886 The National Park Service’s National Historic Landmark nomination for The Breakers records that Cornelius Vanderbilt II, chairman of the board of the New York Central and Michigan Central railroads, bought the 13-acre property from Pierre Lorillard in 1885, together with a wooden house that Peabody and Stearns had built in 1877. Abigail Van Slyck, an architectural historian at Connecticut College, writes in a 2011 Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians article, The Spatial Practices of Privilege, that Peabody and Stearns designed the children’s cottage in 1886, the first of several changes Vanderbilt made to the property after the purchase.Some popular sources date the building to 1877 or 1878, alongside the first mansion, but the 1886 date appears more likely, because the Acton Historical Society cites a Newport Mercury item of July 3, 1886, describing a “toy house” Vanderbilt built for his children soon after the family moved in.A Queen Anne cottage with an ocean-facing porch and a complete kitchenThe Children’s Cottage is a small-scale example of Victorian architecture, featuring half-timbering and shingles characteristic of the Queen Anne Revival style associated with the original Breakers. An open porch faces the sea and four wooden posts carved in the shape of figures from Dutch folklore support its roof. The interior contains a large red brick chimney that separates the living room from the kitchen. The fireplace of this cottage is so big that it contains seats built into it. The kitchen has a built-in stove, a sink and a china cupboard. In the above-mentioned study, Van Slyck argues that the cottage was modeled on an almshouse and devoted to the homely skills of cooking and sewing, a claim to humbleness that its size, expense and layout contradicted.The 1892 fire and the fireproof house that followed The old house did not stand for long. American Essence reports that a fire that began in the kitchen largely destroyed the original Breakers in 1892 and Vanderbilt then commissioned architect Richard Morris Hunt to design a replacement.The nomination says Vanderbilt commissioned Hunt in 1893 and that the new house was built between 1893 and 1895. It adds that Hunt used an approach he called the “Critical Path Method,” building elements that could be produced independently at the same time, which let him finish in 27 months. Because Vanderbilt insisted on making the house as fireproof as possible, the structure contains no wooden parts and steel trusses support the masonry, though the interiors include oak and walnut paneling. The kitchen sits in a separate first-floor wing and not in the basement, a layout chosen for fire safety.How the cottage remains part of the estate todayA Preservation Society of Newport County photograph record says the cottage survived the fire because it stood apart from the main house. SAH Archipedia calls it the freestanding playhouse and says it is all that remains from the earlier era and the Acton Historical Society’s description goes further, calling it all that is left of Peabody and Stearns’ work on the property. The nomination says the cottage remains as it was originally constructed and lists it, with the main house, among the estate’s contributing buildings. The society bought the mansion from the heirs of Vanderbilt’s youngest daughter, Gladys, in 1972 and visitors pass through the grounds by the thousands each year, the nomination adds. The above-mentioned study notes that the main house has long been read as a reflection of the family’s class status, while the cottage has been ignored.You use AI every day. Now get your AI Quotient. Take the AIQ test.