When I think of Newport’s mansions, King Ludwig II of Bavaria suddenly comes to mind — the king behind Neuschwanstein and the palaces of Herrenchiemsee and Linderhof. Splendid buildings, gilded furnishings, mirrors, grand staircases, ballrooms, hidden servants’ passages, the first telephones.
And indeed, the Newport mansions and Neuschwanstein Castle were built at almost the same time.
Only Newport’s villas did not spring from the imagination of a fairy-tale king. They were the ideas of America’s super-rich about what wealth should look like, made stone. That is probably also why they were finished. Unlike Neuschwanstein.
In Newport, splendour was not a refuge for a king withdrawing from political reality. It was itself part of a modern capitalist reality. Industrialists, railroad magnates and heirs to great fortunes built summer houses there that resembled French châteaux, Italian Renaissance palaces or English country houses.
“Summer houses” is a remarkably modest term for them.
The mansions were not simply meant to be beautiful or comfortable. They were meant to prove something: that there was money, of course. But also taste, education and pedigree — or at least the ability to stage pedigree convincingly.
If you do not have a long history, you can try furnishing yourself with one. Money was to become history, commercial success social legitimacy, and a summer house a palace. Perhaps this is also where Newport and King Ludwig draw closer again. Neither simply wanted to build. They wanted to turn reality into an image.
Only Newport’s image rested on firmer financial foundations.
My Instagram bubble
I repeatedly find myself in an Instagram bubble centred on American interior design.
Naturally, this is not a scientific sample. Algorithms do not show you the world. They show you what keeps you looking long enough. Even so, what I see there is striking: colours, dark wood, inlay, stucco, patterned wallpaper, heavy furniture, colourful tiles, deep carpets, display cabinets and ornaments.
Of course, that too is a caricature.
Yet the contrast seems to exist: Mar-a-Lago versus Bauhaus. Gilded armrest versus Le Corbusier chair. Dark green wood panelling versus white wall. Stucco versus exposed concrete.
Two ways of looking rich
In parts of American domestic culture, prosperity is expressed through abundance: through materials, visible effort and things that look expensive and preferably not easy to explain at a glance. Wood should look crafted. Fabrics should hang heavily. Ornament should show that someone has invested time, money and attention — even if timber framing, plasterboard and mass-produced decorative elements lie behind it.
European modernism developed an almost opposite expression: white walls, clean lines, little furniture, no ornament, materials that do not disguise themselves. Exposed concrete, then, is not neutral either. It carries an idea.
The gilded armchair says: “I can afford excess.”
The exposed concrete says: “I have no need of excess.”
A purchased past
Perhaps another difference lies in the relationship with history.
In Europe, history is often simply there. It stands in the townscape, in churches, town halls, townhouses and palaces. You can preserve it, alter it, fight it or ignore it, but you do not first have to invent it.
In the United States, history was more often something that had to be visibly manufactured.
That does not apply to the whole country or every period. But in the Newport mansions, it is hard to miss. European history was imported, quoted and reassembled there: a French salon here, an Italian courtyard there, an English fireplace, a classical motif, a tapestry with provenance.
Anyone walking through these houses was meant to see not just money. They were meant to see continuity.
The message was not: “We have just become rich.” It was: “We have always belonged here.”
Perhaps something of that logic survives today. Historical styles convey more than comfort. They convey rank. A room with panelling, a coffered ceiling and heavy furniture looks as though it has a past — even if the house was built only three years ago.
European modernism responded with suspicion. The new architecture did not want to pretend it was old. It wanted to prove that it was new.
So which is more beautiful?
The question probably does not take us very far.
Angie and I like the idea of European modernism: light, clarity, good materials, little distraction. We try to follow it in our own house too. We have just never quite brought ourselves to embrace exposed concrete.
In the end, it is not really about which side has better taste.
What is interesting is what each intends to show. In Newport, splendour was meant to create pedigree. In Bauhaus, form, function and discipline are meant to carry an idea of the future.
But exposed concrete is not an absence of staging either. It just makes a subtler show of not needing any.