On our recent cruise on board the Golden Princess, we dropped anchor on the island and relived via an unforgettable guided tour the broad and varied development of America – from its colonial times to the Industrial Revolution and the exciting era known as La Belle Epoque, complete with its art and architecture, interior design and landscapes.
Our first stop was the St. Mary’s Parish, the oldest Roman Catholic Church on the island, where the young socialite Jacqueline Bouvier married the dashing John Fitzgerald Kennedy in 1953. We simply could not just drive pass Hammersmith Farm where the wedding reception took place.
After a brief overview of the extraordinary wealth of the city’s ultra exclusive social circle, we took a leisurely walk through Rosecliff Mansion, where Teresa Fair Oelrichs, considered among the undisputed party givers of the Newport Summer colony, spent summer months entertaining extended family and guests from both sides of the Atlantic Ocean.
Created as a showcase for elegant and extravagant entertainment, Rosecliff was modeled after the Grand Trianon, a baroque pavilion built in the great park of Versailles for Louis XIV. Architect Stanford White designed the white glazed terra-cotta house to suit his clients’ turn-of-the-century requirements while preserving much of the 17th-century detail of its model.
The mansion takes the shape of an "H" with a horizontal center section flanked by two vertical wings. The white vestibule and stair hall were decorated with Louis XIV gilt tables and chairs. The ballroom, originally referred to as the living room, is 40 feet wide and 8o feet long, still unsurpassed in size in all of Newport.
The hostess with the mostest continued to make the place the fitting venue of fabulous events, from a ballet with a cast of hundreds to a full opera to an entire circus. Newport’s gilded age abruptly ended with the advent of World War I.
However, some of the splendor of Rosecliff’s glamorous past was recreated when it was used as a setting for scenes in the film The Betsy in 1973 with Sir Lawrence Olivier and The Great Gatsby in 1974 with Robert Redford.
Having experienced the grandeur of the good old days, that perhaps may never come back, we drove back to port where the Golden Princess, our very own floating palace for more than a week, awaited us in all its glory. We sailed back to New York to catch our luxurious Cathay Pacific Airways flight on business class with state-of-the-art facilities and headed for home. What a flight, what a cruise, what a wonderful trip!