Kingscote (mansion)

Kingscote
View of house from southeast, 2008
Location: Newport, Rhode Island, United States
Built: 1839
Architect: Richard Upjohn
Governing body: Preservation Society of Newport County
NRHP Reference#: 73000058
Significant dates
Added to NRHP: May 17, 1973[1]
Designated NHL: June 19, 1996[2]

Kingscote is a Gothic Revival house museum in Newport, Rhode Island built in 1839. Kingscote was one of the first summer "cottages" constructed in Newport. The house is currently owned by the Preservation Society of Newport County and is open to the public.

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History

George Noble Jones, a southern plantation owner who owned the El Destino Plantation and Chemonie Plantation, constructed this Gothic Revival style summer cottage along a farm path known as Bellevue Avenue. At the outbreak of the American Civil War, the Jones family permanently left Newport, and the house was sold in 1864 to William Henry King, an Old China Trade merchant. King's nephew David inherited and enlarged the house in 1878. In December of 1880, he hired McKim, Mead and White to design a new addition to the house, including a new dining room with opalescent glass bricks purchased from Louis Comfort Tiffany. The King family owned the house until 1972, when the last descendant deeded it to the Preservation Society. Today, Kingscote is a National Historic Landmark (NHL) and a contributing property to the Bellevue Avenue Historic District, also an NHL. The house is a rare survivor of a Gothic Revival house and landscape with original family furnishings still remaining.[3]

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