The Breakers

Hosts Matt Fox and Shari Hiller visit Newport, Rhode Island, to tour The Breakers, Cornelius Vanderbilt II's summer "cottage."

More from Special Presentation
Filed under: Bedrooms, Decorating

Cornelius Vanderbilt II actually had very simple tastes and was quite modest about his background. However, as the patriarch of the country's wealthiest family, he had a position of supremacy to uphold so he used The Breakers as a summer cottage.

After a visit to "The Breakers," Cornelius Vanderbilt's summer home in Newport, Rhode Island, hosts Matt Fox and Shari Hiller apply what they've learned to decorate a guest bedroom in a pretty colonial brick home.

The Breakers

The couple's youngest daughter, Gladys and her husband, Count Laszlo Szechenyi of Hungary, inherited The Breakers in 1934 with the death of her mother. Countess Szechenyi opened the house in 1948, allowing visitors to tour the first floor of the home while she still lived here to help raise funds for The Preservation Society of Newport County. In 1972, the house was purchased by the society from her heirs and is now designated a national historic landmark.
The furniture in the dining room is original, as is most of the furniture in the home. The table opens to allow seating for 34 and the chairs and draperies are in the original salmon-colored damask design rewoven by Scalamandre to match the original fabric's specifications.
The music room was used for recitals and dances for generations. Amazingly, the room and its furnishings were executed in Paris, crated in sections, and then sent to America by ship.