Best Known for Its Gilded Age Architecture, Newport, Rhode Island, Is Also Home to a Rich Legacy of Black History

Newport, Rhode Island, spans approximately 11 square miles and kisses the edge of Narragansett Bay to the north. Despite its relatively small scale, this seaside city is known for its outsized historical significance in the early development of the United States as a nation, particularly as it relates to commerce, trade, politics—and, perhaps most of all, architecture.In addition to classic Colonial architecture, Newport is best known for its opulent Gilded Age mansions—summer “cottages” built in varying styles mimicking the royal palaces of Europe. These were mostly built by wealthy American families between 1870 and 1915, as conspicuous consumption became a symbolic tool of the elite. Many of these estates, including The Breakers (Vanderbilt family), The Elms (Edward Julius Berwind), Marble House (William Kissam Vanderbilt), Chateau-sur-Mer (William Shepard Wetmore), Rosecliff (Theresa Fair Oelrichs), and Rough Point (Doris Duke) are now open to the public as museums, and some have served as set locations for many a period piece.The Elms, a Gilded Age mansion in Newport built in 1901.
Courtesy of the Collection of the Newport Historical SocietyThe Gilded Age period in US history in the late 19th century was a time of great economic expansion, European immigration, industrialization, and widespread political corruption. Coined by author Mark Twain to describe an era of social ills masked by a thin, gold gilding of materialist excess, its advent came only a decade after the formal abolition of slavery in 1865, making the buying, selling, and forced labor of African people (along with other marginalized groups) a foundational aspect of the economic strides the United States enjoyed at the time, which has continued to undergird the success of the country up through the present day.In June, The Gilded Age returned to HBO with its third season, and the plot dives more deeply into the thriving Black community of Newport, Rhode Island: an under-explored aspect of historical Black middle-class life on the eastern seaboard, which was marked by property ownership and business ownership too. In the show’s first season, audiences were introduced to the van Rhijn and Russell families on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, along with Brooklyn’s small but robust concentration of Black elites. In season two, the wealthy upper class of New York traveled to Newport, which sits on Aquidneck Island, for summer leisure—a customary escape from daily life for those who could afford the time and space away from work and their primary urban homes. But season three looks more closely at the inner-workings of Newport’s Black community during the period, making for a more nuanced exploration of the show’s environment and the time period that houses it.The Black history of NewportThough The Gilded Age is entirely fictional, it is grounded in reality. The Russell family in the show is inspired by the Vanderbilts, and real figures like Mamie Fish, Caroline Schermerhorn Astor, and Arabella Huntington seem to get nods throughout. Class distinctions are made plain by the difference in how wealthy robber baron families and their staff members live; multiple stories are being told at once, holding nuances across race, class, and gender under a single roof.“The show sets up this complicated understanding of wealth and wealth disparity in the 19th century, and these are all themes and conversations that we’re still having in the 21st century,” says Dr. Erica Armstrong Dunbar, a historian who serves as co-executive producer and historical consultant on the show. While many narratives about Black Americans from this time period focus on southern sharecroppers and other cultural offshoots of slavery, The Gilded Age offers a peek inside another facet of Black life. Race and class are inextricably linked, but seeing Black characters occupy a more privileged socioeconomic stature adds color to the breadth of the Black experience, and illustrates the hard work and shrewd business acumen that made enjoying this new wealth possible—particularly as descendants of those who were extremely disadvantaged just half a generation before. “We have this opportunity with The Gilded Age to move away from the narrative of sharecropping as the only story about Black America in the 1880s, and [explore] this narrative around the Black elite—that very small insular group of Black [families] who are living a different kind of life, which is often not so talked about.” The small but powerful group of Black families who experience greater proximity to wealth (and whiteness, both in terms of sharing space and sharing the cultural customs borne of privilege) becomes its own sort of status for the show’s Black characters.



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