Chateau-sur-Mer – Newport

Built in 1852 as an Italianate villa for William Shepard Wetmore, a merchant in the Old China Trade, Chateau-sur-Mer was the most palatial residence in Newport until the Vanderbilt houses arrived. Constructed of Fall River Granite, it later absorbed a new three-story wing, a porte-cochere, and a projecting four-story tower with mansard roof when the Wetmores left for an extended European trip and handed the house to an architect to remodel in the French Second Empire style. The result is a single building that walks you through nearly every major design trend of the latter half of the 19th century. Now owned by the Preservation Society of Newport County and open as a museum, it is the place to understand what Newport was becoming before the truly extravagant money arrived.