Private Vanderbilt Residences at The Breakers Open for the First Time in 129 Years

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The third floor of The Breakers has been off-limits to the public for more than a century. Private bedrooms, bathrooms, and recreational spaces used by the Vanderbilt family and household staff at the palatial Newport summer home were located on this floor. Even when the house became a museum in 1948, visitors were still denied access to these spaces. Vanderbilts still lived there! This summer, guests to the mansion finally got to see what’s been happening upstairs when the third floor opened for a new tour.

Untapped New York Insiders are invited to take part in a free virtual tour of The Breakers on August 22nd where we’ll see the newly unveiled rooms on the third floor plus a few of the jaw-dropping spaces in other areas of the home (which we’re keeping a secret!). Not an Insider yet? Become a member today with promo code JOINUS and get your first month free!

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The Breakers Third Floor Preservation in Progress Tour gives guests unprecedented access to private rooms formerly occupied by Vanderbilt descendants. The last heirs to live in these spaces, Paul and Gladys Szápáry— great-grandchildren of Cornelius Vanderbilt II—moved out in 2018.

Spaces on this new tour will look different than those in the rest of the house. Whereas the first floors of the mansion are lavishly and meticulously decorated, spaces on the third floor appear as works in progress. And that’s the point. This new tour allows visitors to see preservation in action, from research and planning to physical restoration work.

The home was designed by the noted architect Richard Morris Hunt and constructed between 1893 and 1895. Rooms on the third floor represent over thirteen decades and four generations of Vanderbilt occupancy. As a result, the spaces contain relics from various different time periods. Tourgoers might see a bust from the 1900s and then a table from the 1940s.

The Breakers third floor — Photo by George Gray

“We have found labels under carpets; we have found recipes in drawers. But mostly, the greatest find has been the collective knowledge we’ve gained through observing and studying spaces nobody has been able to study since 1895,” says Leslie Jones, Director of Museum Affairs and Chief Curator at the Preservation Society of Newport County.

Once initial research and restoration work is complete, the third-floor spaces will be presented as part of the chronological narrative told throughout the rest of the house. “Overall preservation is the main goal,” Jones continues, “Each room’s condition will mirror the era we are speaking about. An 1895 room will be restored to look as if it were 1895. But a room in the early 2000s will simply be cleaned and maintained in the same manner the Szápárys had to show how a building can physically and visually age over the course of a century with a careful and meticulous approach.”

Visitors will have some work to do in order to gain access to these previously prohibited spaces. To get to the third floor, participants need to climb 85 stairs (and descend 95). But it’s worth it.

“Complete and utter awe has been the majority of the feedback we’ve gotten,” Jones shares, “[Guests] are completely gobsmacked by the size of the space, the condition it’s in, how beautifully kept a lot of the surfaces are, and they want more…They have great responses and feedback in terms of how we tell our story, but they have more questions that we also have and are looking for the answers to.”

To learn more about these spaces, and see them for yourself, you can book a ticket to The Breakers Third Floor Preservation in Progress Tour on the The Breakers website. Tours typically run daily at 3 pm and last approximately one hour. Check out some more first-look photos of the third floor in the gallery below: