NEWPORT – The sale of the Newport mansion known as “Miramar” came within $3 million of matching the record for biggest residential property sale in Rhode Island history.
The 40,982-square-foot home at 646 Bellevue Ave. on the famous Cliff Walk in Newport was recently bought for $27 million, according to a city official.
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The sale of the massive oceanside “Miramar” mansion, which has a total of 46 rooms, was about $3 million shy of the record set by the September sale of the “Clarendon Court” estate just a few doors down at 626 Bellevue Ave. The “Clarendon Court” sale topped a previous record set when singer Taylor Swift spent $17.75 million in 2013 for a Westerly property known as “Holiday House.”
Public records show that the seller of 646 Bellevue Ave. was called 646 Bellevue LLC, while the buyer is a company known as Miramar 646 LLC.
Built in 1915, “Miramar” is known as one of Newport’s Gilded Age mansions, and one of Newport’s largest private homes, according to Gustave White Sotheby’s International Realty, which represented the seller.
The building was designed in 1912 by architect Horace Trumbauer at the request of the prominent and wealth Widner family of Philadelphia, with a neoclassical French petit palais building constructed of limestone on an 8-acre property designed by French landscape architect Jacques Greber, according to the real estate agency.
The patriarch of the family George Widner died on the Titanic, along with his son, but when she returned to the U.S. after getting saved on a lifeboat, his wife Eleanor Elkins followed through with plans to build the Newport mansion, which is named after the Spanish word for “sea view,” according to Gustave White Sotheby’s International Realty.
“The design, construction, setting, and historical pedigree of this property are second to none,” said the listing agent for the property, David Huberman, of Gustave White Sotheby’s International Realty. “From private entry through its elaborate gates, to the flow through arched doorways from formal dining spaces through grand ball rooms to its exquisite seaside terrace it offers grandeur, and an opportunity to own a piece of history that can not be recreated.”
Marc Larocque is a PBN staff writer. Contact him at Larocque@PBN.com. You may also follow him on Twitter @LaRockPBN.
