Why Old Money Abandoned Newport's Gilded Age Mansions

For Gilded Age history buffs, discover why America's richest families built, and rapidly abandoned, the marble mega-mansions of Newport, Rhode Island. In the summer of 1899, Newport, Rhode Island held more private wealth per square mile than anywhere else on Earth. But how did a small 17th-century harbor town founded on religious tolerance transform into the ultimate playground for America's ultra-wealthy? And more importantly, why did this architectural golden era last less than a single human lifetime? We explore the geography of ambition that turned Aquidneck Island into a city of palaces, examining the extreme assessed value of these estates, the maritime trading boom that started it all, and the raw mathematics of running houses that cost more in a month than a factory foreman earned in two decades. Today, these Gilded Age mansions are museums, but the story of the families who built them reveals the fleeting nature of historic American wealth.