Bellevue Avenue is the mansion mile of Newport — a two-mile stretch of Gilded Age architecture unmatched anywhere in the United States. The Preservation Society of Newport County manages the most significant properties (The Breakers, Marble House, The Elms, Rosecliff, Chateau-sur-Mer, Kingscote, and others), most of which are open to visitors. Walking south from the town center, the scale of the houses increases as you go: by the time you reach The Breakers at the far end, the cottages have become palaces.
The houses span fifty years of American plutocratic taste, from the Italianate Kingscote (1839) through the French Renaissance Chateau-sur-Mer (1852, massively expanded 1872) to the Beaux-Arts extravagances of the 1890s. A single Preservation Society ticket gives access to multiple houses, which is the best way to understand the progression. The gardens and grounds between the mansions are visible from the street even without a ticket, and the contrast between the estates and the relatively modest town just a few blocks away is instructive. This is where American industrial capitalism went to spend its surplus in the 1880s and 1890s, and it shows.