mind your manors

Newport’s historic estates, along with a wave of chic hotels and restaurants, are drawing a new generation of glitz-and-glamour seekers to one of America’s original seaside resort towns

-  Christopher Bollen

On a hot afternoon in the waning days of Newport's high season, I found myself outside an enormous red sandstone estate called Rough Point, trying desperately to get a green 1969 MG Roadster into gear. The last resident of the late-19th-century mansion, commissioned by a scion of the Vanderbilt family in the English country manner, was the tobacco heiress Doris Duke. Late in her fascinating, scandal-ridden life, she founded the Newport Restoration Foundation, which is credited with saving many of the town's historic buildings. After her death, Rough Point became a museum decked out in her extravagant and whimsical furniture-an everlasting tribute to how the 1 percent of the 1 percent once lived.

The car had been arranged by The Vanderbilt, where I was staying, and I was late for an "experience" that had been planned for me-sampling absinthe at the hotel's clandestine bar. As I finally found first gear and haltingly exited the enormous circular driveway, two tourists walked past. "Did they film any scenes here?" one asked excitedly.

"Not that I saw," replied the other. "But I'm only on episode four! I did hear, though, that the owner ran over her decorator by the front gate."