The dust will never settle at Newport’s busiest mansions

By: Ann O’Sullivan
Posted In: Features

Harold Mathews has battled the sea nearly every day for the past 20 years as property supervisor at the Elms, one of Newport’s grandest mansions, located on Bellevue Avenue. The reason? The ocean is a large concern for all those who look after the mansions, especially on warm days. At the Elms, Mathews says, windows are checked hourly for any change in the weather and are closed when humidity is high to protect the tapestries.

Mathews is one of the many members of The Preservation Society of Newport County who go around every day buffing, waxing, and dusting to ready the grand mansions of Newport for the 3,000 or so people who peek into the lives of the richest people of the Gilded Age.

His staff, a mix of international students in the summer and members of The Preservation Society, clean the 65,000 feet daily from before the mansions open until after they close every evening. Before opening, everything must be vacuumed, buffed and waxed. After the Elms has opened at 10 am, the constant dusting begins. “The dust never stops; it just keeps coming,” said Mathews.

The Elms was built between 1898 and 1901 for the Berwind family of New York and Pennsylvania, where Edward Julius Berwind made his money in the coal industry.

The house was opened to the public in 1962. Since then, the Elms has opened the back of the house as well, showing the kitchen, servants quarters and the coal tunnel that runs through the basement. To open the coal tunnel to the public, the Preservation Society had to tackle one of its biggest problems since 1962. The tunnel, which had been used to store and transport coal, had to be cleaned thoroughly and treated for asbestos.

Brian Coyne, property supervisor at the Breakers on Ochre Point Avenue, has never had to deal with coal dust. The biggest problem at the Breakers is the wind, as the house is always exposed directly to the ocean’s breeze.

The building’s upper loggia is open all summer long and leaves each of the four 900-pound chandeliers in the mansion’s great room vulnerable to high winds. Coyne emphatically spoke of sleeping on the mansion’s main staircase during a hurricane to ensure that nothing happened to the house. “You’ve gotta protect the collection,” Coyne said.

The Breakers is the mansion with the highest foot traffic in Newport. Coyne started working at the Breakers at age 14, but he has lived on the premises since he was born because his father was the property supervisor before him. He is responsible for a full staff of 10 people in the summertime and four in the winter.

In the summer when the house opens at 9 a.m. Coyne and his staff begin their work at 6:30 a.m. Similar to the Elms, the jobs at the Breakers are dry mopping and buffing the floors, cleaning the public bathrooms, and the mansion’s other major job: vacuuming the miles of red carpet that run through the house. After the house opens, the team starts the endless dusting until the day is over.

“You’re paying $15. You can’t see dirt,” said Coyne who spoke also of the other reason to clean during the day. “People want to see action- what their money is going to.”

The Breakers was built in 1893 by the architect Richard Morris Hunt for

Cornelius Vanderbilt II, son of Commodore Cornelius Vanderbilt who built the family fortune through the New York Central Railroad. The house was opened to the public by Gladys Vanderbilt, the youngest child of Cornelius Vanderbilt II in 1948 to raise money for the Preservation Society. It was purchased by the Society in 1972.