About Rosecliff

Rosecliff is a Gilded Age mansion of Newport, Rhode Island, now open to the public as a historic house museum. The house has also been known as the Hermann Oelrichs House or the J. Edgar Monroe House.

It was built 1898–1902 by Theresa Fair Oelrichs, a silver heiress from Nevada, whose father James Graham Fair was one of the four partners in the Comstock Lode. She was the wife of Hermann Oelrichs, American agent for Norddeutscher Lloyd steamship line. She and her husband, together with her sister, Virginia Fair, bought the land in 1891 from the estate of George Bancroft and commissioned the architectural firm of McKim, Mead, and White to design a summer home suitable for entertaining on a grand scale. With little opportunity to channel her considerable energy elsewhere, she "threw herself into the social scene with tremendous gusto, becoming, with Mrs. Stuyvesant Fish and Mrs. O.H.P. Belmont (of nearby Belcourt), one of the three great hostesses of Newport."

Text from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.

Founded
1902
Architect
Stanford White, McKim, Mead & White

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Photos of Rosecliff

  1. Rosecliff, Newport01Newportn ole · CC BY 2.0
  2. Rosecliff, Newport, Rhode Island02Newport, Rhode IslandThe original uploader was Daderot at English Wikipedia. · CC BY-SA 3.0
  3. Rosecliff03RosecliffCaptain-tucker · CC BY-SA 3.0
  4. Rosecliff as seen from the front. Built by Theresa Fair Oelrichs, heiress to the Comstock Lode fortune.04As seen from the front. Built by Theresa Fair Oelrichs, heiress to the Comstock Lode fortune.olekinderhook · CC BY 3.0
  5. Photo of Rosecliff05Photo of RosecliffBrian Feathers · CC BY-SA 3.0
  6. Rosecliff in the Fall (side garden)06In the Fall (side garden)Rhonda McCloughan (Pr41799) · CC BY-SA 4.0

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Nearby museums

Make a day of it. 4 more museums are within a mile of Rosecliff; the closest, Marble House, is about a mile away.