Please Note: At this time, single room arrangements may no longer be available for this tour. Our Customer Service department is prepared to waitlist any patrons interested in this lodging option.
Founded in 1639, Newport, Rhode Island, has a heritage of religious tolerance, slave trading, piracy, war, and whaling. But this tiny New England city—where both Henry James and Edith Wharton summered—is best known for its mansions, the palatial “cottages” built by Gilded Age society for an 8-week season that was both formal and flamboyant.
Led by arts journalist Richard Selden, this 4-day tour includes guided visits to 3 Newport mansions, including the grandest of all, the Breakers, railroad baron Cornelius Vanderbilt II’s 70-room oceanfront palazzo, designed by Richard Morris Hunt. On a driving tour, view additional mansions, the famed Cliff Walk, and other points of interest, with stops at early 18th-century Trinity Church; Touro Synagogue, the oldest surviving synagogue in North America; the John La Farge-decorated Newport Congregational Church; and the International Tennis Hall of Fame in the Newport Casino, an 1880 shingle-style landmark by McKim, Mead and White.
The Gilded Age has also been called the American Renaissance—a period in which architects, artists, and craftspeople collaborated on extravagant residences as well as magnificent public, religious, commercial, and university buildings. On the return trip, visit New Haven, Connecticut, to see several such examples on the Yale campus and have lunch at the Union League Cafe, housed in a former Gilded Age club. Cost includes bus transportation, lodging, all activities, admissions and fees, gratuities, and most meals.
General Details
- Cost includes three breakfasts, three lunches, and two dinners; accommodations are at the Homewood Suites in Middletown, Rhode Island.
- Tour departs by bus from the Mayflower Hotel, Connecticut Ave. and DeSales St., NW, with a pick-up stop at the I-495 Exit 27 commuter parking lot at 8:40 a.m.
- Single-room supplement $325 (factored into the Single Room Member and Single Room Non-Member pricing). See note at the top of the tour's description
- Singles registering at the double-room rate are paired (on a nonsmoking basis) if possible, but must pay the single-room supplement otherwise.
- Detailed information is mailed to registrants about four weeks prior to departure.
- Registrants may want to consider purchasing trip insurance.
