Housing Problem

The day of the footman is all but gone in Newport, R.I.--the golden day when it took some 30 servants to run a summer "cottage," when the Sunday lunch table was set for 250 as a matter of course, and creeping socialism was represented by the 16th Amendment, empowering the Government to levy an income tax. Another knell tolled for those high and far-off times last week as the auctioneer's hammer fell on the contents of The Elms, one of the last of the great houses that were still homes--until the death a year ago of Miss Julia Berwind, at approximately 95.

The Elms, built in 1901, was inspired by the Chateau Alliere near Paris, sits like a palace in a park of landscaped terraces, ornamental walks, stately trees, lawns, fountains, plus two teahouses, three bronze statues, and a profusion of ornate limestone flower pots, cornucopias and wrestling cupids. No commercial vehicle ever scuffed the smooth gravel of its front driveway in the old days; and it took so much coal to animate the giant boilers that a special narrow-gauge underground railroad, complete with a turntable in the subbasement, was constructed to keep the hungry furnaces fed. The Berwind family, who built it, was in the coal business.

Auctioneer Louis J. Marion of Manhattan's Parke-Bernet Galleries spent two days all over the house knocking down 680 lots of gilt "French Court" furniture, red cut-velvet curtains, gilded bronzes, chinoiserie and acres of oriental rugs.

Some 4,000 oglers and antique dealers from London, Paris and New York (who regretfully concluded that most of the "antiques" were imitations) paid $1 a head to traipse through the premises, ended by paying $415,632 for these vestiges of a sumptuous past. Next step for The Elms: the remodelers, who may turn it into a restaurant.

Many of Newport's amazing mansions have been leveled to save taxes (Villa Rosa, next door to The Elms, is slated for demolition soon), but some of the great ones still stand--many with things going on inside them that would give their former owners the cold shivers. Stoneacre, built in 1884 by John W. Ellis, has been a boys' school, and is being razed to become part of the campus of a girls' college. Ochre Court, built in 1888-91 by Ogden Goelet, is a Roman Catholic women's college. The Breakers, built by Cornelius Vanderbilt and Belcourt, the house of Oliver Hazard Perry Belmont, are tourist attractions; The Breakers draws some 50,000 curious trippers a year at $1.75 a head.

Another profitable solution is to turn them into apartment houses, as a former mayor of Newport, James L. Maher, has done with The Crossways, built in 1898 for peppery Mrs. Stuyvesant Fish. There is certainly plenty of space. In The Waves, for example, built in 1927 by John Russell Pope, a four-bedroom, two-bath apartment has been fitted into what was once the dining room.

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