Vernon Court

Infobox Historic building


caption=Front elevation from Bellevue Avenue in 2008
name= Vernon Court
location_town= Newport, Rhode Island
location_country= United States
architect= Carrère and Hastings
client= Anna Van Nest Gambrill
engineer=
construction_start_date= 1898
completion_date= 1898
date_demolished=
cost=
structural_system=
style= Beaux-Arts

Vernon Court is a Gilded Age mansion, located at 492 Bellevue Avenue, Newport, Rhode Island, near the Atlantic coast of the United States. Its design is an adaptation of an 18th century French chateau (Chateau Heroue), by architect Germain Boffrand.

Vernon Court was constructed in 1898 by Carrère and Hastings to be used as a summer cottage for a young widow, Anna Van Nest Gambrill (1865 – 1927). The property remained in the Gambrill family until 1956, when it was auctioned. From 1963 until its closing in 1972, it served as the administration building for Vernon Court Junior College, an all girls school. Over the next two and a half decades it passed through several different owners. In 1998, Vernon Court was acquired by Laurence and Judy Cutler, founders of the National Museum of American Illustration [ [http://www.americanillustration.org/ National Museum of American Illustration official site] ] .

The mansion currently houses the museum's American illustration collections; as the Gilded Age architectural origins are contemporaneous with the "Golden Age of American Illustration" theme on which the collection focuses.

References