Fabrics of the gilded age and beyond. .

Starting in the nineteenth century, Newport, Rhode Island, became a fashionable summer destination for affluent families who otherwise lived in luxurious houses in cities along the East Coast. They had the means to distance themselves from the sweltering heat of summer in the city and instead enjoy the sea breezes and dramatic coastline of Newport. At first families from places like Savannah, Georgia, were content to lodge in boardinghouses, but as the century progressed they began buying land and engaging some of the best-known architects to design summer houses on a grand scale. John A. Cherol has written in these pages (September 1980, p. 498), that the "taste for European styles was set by the series of formidable ladies who ruled Newport's social life from the third quarter of the nineteenth century until World War I. These women sought to emulate European nobility in nearly all aspects of their lives, and their vast resources allowed them to acquire clothing, furnishings, and houses that were of regal q uality and befitted their status as consorts to America's merchant princes."

Many of the Newport houses built around the turn of the twentieth century were designed by such architects as Richard Upjohn, Richard Morris Hunt, Stanford White, and Horace Trumbauer. Ogden Codman Jr., benefiting from near and distant relatives who owned sumptuous Newport houses, was commissioned to design their interiors. During this period the ground, or principal, floor of these residences tended to be opulent and in the French taste. Codman's designs for the upper floors, while still inspired by French design, were less flamboyant and ushered ...