In recent years, billionaires have been buying up some of the few remaining privately held Gilded Age mansions along Bellevue Avenue in Newport, Rhode Island. Now, one of the world’s wealthiest men says Miramar, the property he purchased three years ago, will be open to the public after his and his wife Christine’s deaths.
“Christine and I intend to set Miramar up as a private museum at the time of our deaths for the benefit of the public in perpetuity,” Stephen A. Schwarzman tells Town & Country. “We are honored to have been able to do this for the community and contribute to Newport's historic preservation.”
An exterior look at Miramar and its surrounding property.
Since acquiring the property for $27 million in September 2021 in a deal brokered by Gustave White Sotheby’s agent David Huberman, the Schwarzmans have undertaken an ambitious three-year renovation with the goal of restoring Miramar to its original glory—complete with historically appropriate art and furnishings that will serve as an ideal example of Newport's Gilded Age art and architecture for the public. The museum will be run by a private foundation with an endowment to cover its operation and upkeep.
Ian Wardropper, director of the Frick Collection in New York, is a friend of the Schwarzmans and says they have “really put together the finest collection of French fine and decorative arts of the 18th century that [he has] seen in decades.”
“In the great tradition of the Gilded Age of Newport and the Gilded Age of New York, they are really taking this seriously and trying to get the very best objects they can find to make this house sing,” Wardropper adds.
A view of the dining room before the Schwarzman’s’ renovation.
Those objects include paintings and portraits by Jean-Honoré Fragonard, John Singer Sargent, Vigée Le Brun, Peter Lely, and the 18th-century French painter Jean-Antoine Watteau, among many others, according to a source close to the Schwarzmans.
The collection also includes a Royal Gobelins tapestry by Jean Audran that Miramar’s original owner purchased and installed in the dining room, and a Royal Secretary desk from Versailles circa 1784, the source says.
“Steve and Christine clearly have a love of preservation and that is a trait the people in this community share,” says Trudy Coxe, CEO of the Preservation Society of Newport County, which owns and administers other Newport mansions open to the public including Marble House and the Breakers. “They know the value of our history and have amassed a remarkable, culturally significant collection. What is even more impressive is that the collection is housed at Miramar, an exceptional example of architecture that could be a museum in its own right. They are making a significant contribution to the historic and cultural fabric of the city, and it will serve as an enduring legacy.”
As part of the restoration work at Miramar, the Schwarzmans stripped down seven layers of paint to reveal the interiors’ original wall colors and gilded moldings. They also installed early 18th-century French wood paneling to replace the now-lost early 18th-century French wood paneling that originally lined the living room.
The collection was assembled with assistance from experts to ensure its historical accuracy, and Schwarzman says he and Christine “couldn’t have done it without the many historians, curators, local contractors, and tradesmen who capably brought the property back to life.” The restoration project involved a team that numbered in the hundreds and included local Newport contractors Kirby Perkins.
Wardropper says the Schwarzmans are following in the footsteps of other great collectors. “Henry Clay Frick, when he was furnishing the mansion in Manhattan, used two of the top decorators of the 20th century, Elsie de Wolfe and the British firm White Allom,” Wardropper says. “They not only helped with the interior decoration of the mansion but also advised Frick on works to fill the mansion, so in that sense I think the Schwarzmans are following a time-honored tradition in the United States.”
He adds that he is excited about the opportunity for the public to tour Miramar. “It’s just something that will clearly be a great advantage and a boost to Newport, to have an example of a house like this that has been meticulously restored and which will boast one of the finest collections of French 18th-century furniture in the world,” he says.
Miramar is a fitting property for Schwarzman, who grew up in the suburbs of Philadelphia, where his father owned a dry goods store. The mansion was commissioned by Philadelphia streetcar tycoon George Dunton Widener as a summer home for his family. For the project, Widener tapped Philadelphia architect Horace Trumbauer, who had designed one of the largest houses in the United States, Lynnewood Hall, for his parents. (Trumbauer also designed Newport’s Clarendon Court and the Elms.)
Widener died in the 1912 sinking of the Titanic along with his son Harry, but his widow and Harry’s mother, Eleanor Elkins Widener, survived and moved into Miramar when its construction was completed in 1915. She hosted a housewarming party that August touted by the New York Times as “the largest social entertainment of the Summer.” Later that year, Eleanor married Alexander Hamilton Rice, Jr., an explorer and physician, and Miramar remained in their family until the 1950s. Subsequently, it was owned by the Episcopal Diocese of Rhode Island and later a couple who operated a girls’ boarding school out of the mansion. David B. Ford, a former Goldman Sachs banker, bought it for $17.15 million in 2006, which at the time was the highest price paid for a private residence in Rhode Island.
The plan to turn Miramar into a museum is a continuation of Schwarzman’s philanthropy. Over the past decade, he has made major gifts to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the University of Oxford, Yale University, the National Library of Israel, and the USA Track and Field Foundation. In 2020, he signed the Giving Pledge, adding to the charitable effort Bill Gates, Melinda French Gates, and Warren Buffett founded to encourage wealthy people to contribute the majority of their money to charity.
Closer to the Schwarzmans’ home in Newport, when a suspected sinkhole developed earlier this year along a portion of the 3.5-mile Cliff Walk that runs between the Gilded Age estates of Bellevue Avenue and the ocean, the couple paid for the repair so the public trail could reopen for the summer.
The Cliff Walk runs between the the Gilded Age estates like Miramar and the ocean.
“This was a truly remarkable effort on behalf of the property owners, the city, and a real service to the community,” Peter Janaros, who chairs Newport’s Cliff Walk Commission, told the Newport Daily News in June. “Everybody should be applauded all around: From our volunteer who first brought the potential hazard to the attention of the city, to the property owners, who were able to secure the proper state approvals and generously funded the repairs, we simply wouldn’t have been able to get this section of walkway reopened in time for summer if not for the incredible spirit of community that surrounds the Cliff Walk.”
Sam Dangremond
Contributing Digital Editor
Sam Dangremond is a Contributing Digital Editor at Town & Country, where he covers men's style, co*cktails, travel, and the social scene.
