Ньюпорт: за полтора доллара

In 1895, about one in every ten people in Newport, Rhode Island, was a domestic servant, and Cornelius Vanderbilt the Second was finishing The Breakers, a seventy-room palace built for a summer season of about eight weeks. In 1948, his daughter agreed to lease it to the Preservation Society of Newport County for one dollar a year. Between those dates, the arithmetic changed. John Jacob Astor the Fourth died on the Titanic, and Alfred Gwynne Vanderbilt on the Lusitania. A federal income tax arrived in 1913, and an estate tax followed in 1916. The Depression accelerated the decline, and in 1940 Belcourt, built for $3.2 million, sold for $1,000. A second Newport took its place: a Navy town, a festival town and a summer White House. In 1960 the census counted 47,049 people, the most it has ever recorded. By 1970, before the Navy left, the city had lost more than a quarter of them. In 1973 the Pentagon announced that the Atlantic Fleet's cruiser-destroyer force would leave. Yet in 2025 the Preservation Society's houses counted 901,664 visits, while the city has about 24,000 people, roughly half its 1960 peak. This is the story of a town that built palaces to keep the world out, why the families left, and why Newport's real question is no longer whether anyone visits, but who it is for. Sources National Park Service - The Cliff Walk: A Special Resource Study (1989), The Breakers National Historic Landmark nomination, and "Household Management at Hyde Park" (nps.gov) Preservation Society of Newport County - histories of The Breakers, Marble House, The Elms and Rosecliff, "Lost Newport," and 2025 Annual Report (newportmansions.org, 2026) Brown University Steering Committee on Slavery and Justice - "Slavery and Justice" (Brown University, 2006) Associated Press - reports on servant life in Newport's mansions (February 2013) and the Newport police review of Eduardo Tirella's 1966 death (November 2021) U.S. Census Bureau - decennial census counts and QuickFacts population estimates for Newport city (census.gov) U.S. Naval Institute - Capt. Howard N. Kay, "The New Newport," Proceedings (usni.org, April 1979)