The Breakers

The Breakers is a Vanderbilt mansion located on Ochre Point Avenue, Newport, Rhode Island, United States on the Atlantic Ocean. It is a National Historic Landmark, a contributing property to the Bellevue Avenue Historic District, and is owned and operated by the Preservation Society of Newport County.

The Breakers was built as the Newport summer home of Cornelius Vanderbilt II, a member of the wealthy United States Vanderbilt family. It is built in an Italian Renaissance style. Designed by renowned architect Richard Morris Hunt, with interior decoration by Jules Allard and Sons and Ogden Codman, Jr., the 70-room mansion has a gross area of 125,339 square feet and 62,482 square feet of living area on five floors. The house was constructed between 1893 and 1895. The Ochre Point Avenue entrance is marked by sculpted iron gates and the 30-foot-high (9.1 m) walkway gates are part of a 12-foot-high limestone-and-iron fence that borders the property on all but the ocean side. The footprint of the house covers approximately an acre of the 13-acre estate on the cliffs overlooking the Atlantic Ocean.

The Breakers (1878)

Coordinates: 41°28′11″N 71°17′55″W / 41.46972°N 71.29861°W / 41.46972; -71.29861 The Breakers (1878) was located on Ochre Point Avenue, Newport, Rhode Island, United States.

Designed by Peabody and Stearns for Pierre Lorillard IV in the Queen Anne style, construction began in 1877 and was completed in 1878. The landscaping was designed by Ernest Bowditch. The Breakers was notable for its high tower and steeply-gabled roof forms. Lorillard sold the house in October 1885 to Cornelius Vanderbilt II, who rehired Peabody and Stearns to remodel the building. The brick and shingle structure was destroyed by fire in 1892, and Vanderbilt replaced it with the more famous house designed by Richard Morris Hunt.

Peabody and Stearns also designed a detached cottage that was built with the mansion in 1877 and used as a children's playhouse. This building survived the 1892 fire and is still standing on the grounds of The Breakers. It is open for tours on the grounds of the current mansion.

The Breakers (hotel)

The Breakers Hotel is a historic hotel in Palm Beach, Florida, United States. First known as The Palm Beach Inn, it was opened on January 16, 1896 by oil, real estate, and railroad tycoon, Henry Flagler, to accommodate travelers on his Florida East Coast Railway. It occupied the beachfront portion of the grounds of the Royal Poinciana Hotel, which Flagler had opened beside Lake Worth Lagoon facing the inland waterway in 1894. Guests began requesting rooms "over by the breakers," so Flagler renamed it The Breakers Hotel in 1901. The wooden hotel burned on June 9, 1903 and was rebuilt, opening on February 1, 1904. Rooms started at $4 a night, including three meals a day. Because Flagler forbade motorized vehicles on the property, patrons were delivered between the two hotels in wheeled chairs powered by employees. The grounds featured a nine-hole golf course. The hotel is located at 1 South County Road.

Pre-Negro leagues, Winter League baseball team

In the winter of 1915/1916, the Breakers Hotel hired the services of Cyclone Joe Williams and many fellow team members of the Lincoln Giants pre-Negro League baseball team to take on another pre-Negro League baseball team made up of Indianapolis ABCs players hosted by the Royal Poinciana Hotel. The games hosted Negro League baseball stars of the day, including Ben Taylor, C.I. Taylor, Candy Jim Taylor, John Donaldson, Ashby Dunbar, Jim Jeffries, Jimmie Lyons, Bill Francis, Blainey Hall, Dick Wallace, Louis Santop, and Spot Poles. One newspaper column claimed that "Astors, Vanderbilts, Morgans, and hundreds of others, who never see a ball game outside of Palm Beach... (are) rooting hard for their favorite team.