For the past few decades, Newport, Rhode Island, has felt like a small town haunted by enormous empty mansions of the past. Many of the largest were taken over by the Preservation Society of Newport County and opened for public tours. But with the recent arrival of billionaires such as Oracle founder Larry Ellison, Guggenheim Partners C.E.O. Mark Walter, and—most recently—Blackstone C.E.O. Stephen A. Schwarzman, the small city by the sea is waking up to a new Gilded Age, complete with a social scene to match.
Schwarzman and his wife, Christine, purchased Miramar, a 30,000-square-foot French neoclassical-style estate, for $27 million in 2021 and embarked on a major restoration of the property.
As robber barons and steel magnates did before them, the Schwarzmans are making their social debut in Newport with a bash, a housewarming party next week similar to the one its original owner, Eleanor Elkins Widener, hosted 109 Augusts ago, which The New York Times proclaimed to be “the largest social entertainment of the Summer.” (Her husband George, a streetcar magnate, wasn’t with her. He and their son Harry had perished in the sinking of the Titanic. Eleanor and her maid survived.)
“Christine and Steve Schwarzman welcome you to Miramar for a Housewarming Party,” an e-mailed pistachio-green invitation to the event, which was shared with Air Mail, declares. The dress code is listed as: “Ladies - Day Dresses and Shoes for the Garden … and Perhaps a Hat. Gentlemen - Summer Suits … and Perhaps a Hat as Well!”
Newport is in a tizzy. “The privacy curtains have been up, guards stand out front, trucks come and go by the hundred, which has created an atmosphere of extreme anticipation,” says Trevor Traina, an entrepreneur who served as U.S. ambassador to Austria during the Trump administration. He adds, “It’s almost at the Gatsby level.”
Schwarzman and his wife, Christine, purchased Miramar, a 30,000-square-foot French neoclassical-style estate, for $27 million in 2021.
Traina’s mother, Dede Wilsey, owns Beaulieu, which was completed in 1859 by New York architect Calvert Vaux. It sits three doors down from Miramar.
According to a source close to the Schwarzmans, the guest list for next week’s party includes about 200 people—and the hosts don’t know a good portion of them. On the list are a number of longtime Newport residents Schwarzman met several years ago when he attended Coaching Weekend, a horse-drawn-carriages event that Alfred Gwynne Vanderbilt began in the 1880s.
The party has grown to include friends of friends, children of friends, and neighbors (many of whom have lived through construction traffic at the south end of Bellevue Avenue for the past couple of years). The source says the garden party will offer access to the house to see its 18th-century French furnishings and art collection, but most of the event will take place on the lawn.
Photographer Nick Mele, whose family has been spending summers in Newport for generations and previously owned Edith Wharton’s onetime summer home, Land’s End, grew up going to houses such as Miramar for playdates.
“I’ve played hide-and-seek in a lot of these houses—they haven’t been this grand secret; they’re the homes of people I’ve known.” he says. For that reason, he is excited that Schwarzman appears to be interested in being part of the scene and opening his house to his new neighbors.
“The social scene in Newport has traditionally been very hard to break into—people are very hesitant to let new people in, for better or worse,” Mele says. “If you come in guns blazing, people might not accept you, as opposed to if you come in and are fun to be around and pleasant. If [Schwarzman] does want to be part of the social scene, I think it all comes down to how much he actually invests his energy into being a part of Newport rather than just acting like he just deserves to belong because of who he is.”
“It’s almost at the Gatsby level.”
Compare, for example, the reaction to another billionaire’s project down the street. Ellison now owns all four properties between the Preservation Society mansions Rosecliff and Marble House, starting with Beechwood, which he purchased in 2010 and has reportedly spent more than $100 million restoring. Although the Oracle billionaire received approvals for the work in 2014, boulders are strewn about the front lawn and the work is still going on—and infuriating neighbors for years.
“Larry Ellison has had his house for years, but I’ve never seen it or heard of him being here,” Mele says.
Whether Schwarzman would actually spend time in Newport was an open question, too. In 2021, he also purchased a waterfront property on Brant Point, in Nantucket, for $32.5 million.
“The social scene in Newport has traditionally been very hard to break into—people are very hesitant to let new people in, for better or worse.”
Schwarzman has his choice of real estate. In 2008, The New Yorker reported that in addition to a Park Avenue co-op and Four Winds in Palm Beach, at the time he owned an eight-acre estate in East Hampton that once belonged to Vanderbilt heir Carter Burden, a property on the coast of Saint-Tropez, and a beachfront house in Jamaica—all of which cost at least $125 million when their renovations were factored in. More recently, he paid around $100 million for Conholt Park, a 17th-century estate in Wiltshire. “I love houses,” Schwarzman told The New Yorker’s James B. Stewart. “I’m not sure why.”
Schwarzman does seem to be courting Newport society. Last summer he gave a sold-out lecture, open to the public at Newport’s Redwood Library & Athenaeum, on the subject of leadership. And when his neighbor across Bellevue Avenue, Esmond Harmsworth, president of the literary agency Aevitas Creative Management, invited Schwarzman to his son’s first-birthday party last year, Schwarzman showed up.
“It was a bit of a glamorous birthday party for a one-year-old,” Harmsworth says of the tented event. “I don’t think we would have gotten him to a thing at the children’s museum.”
Schwarzman also made a point of giving work to some established Newport figures. Jerry Kirby, a former professional sailor who raced in six America’s Cup competitions and launched his construction business in 1980, oversaw the restoration work. Polly Onet, who grew up spending summers in Newport and works with Bronson van Wyck, the leading event designer, is planning the party. As Mele notes, hiring Van Wyck’s team to plan a party “means it’s going to be a grand soirée.”
Schwarzman does love a party. His 60th-birthday party transformed part of the Park Avenue Armory into a replica of the Schwarzmans’ triplex at 740 Park Avenue, which once was owned by John D. Rockefeller Jr. Martin Short M.C.’d, and Patti LaBelle and Rod Stewart performed for a crowd of 350 as they feasted on lobster, filet mignon, and baked Alaska. Ten years later, Schwarzman hosted 400 of his closest friends at his Palm Beach estate, Four Winds, for a bash that featured live camels, acrobats, and a 12-minute fireworks display. Gwen Stefani sang “Happy Birthday.”
“In the very old days, when important families came to Newport, they would throw a major party to announce their arrival,” Traina says. “At our house, Beaulieu, Grace Vanderbilt brought a hot Broadway musical to Newport for the night and reconstructed the theater. That party made The New York Times. That was the formula.”
Locals say they are intrigued to see the renovations by a billionaire who seems to actually want to fit in. “Other than Larry Ellison’s never-ending project, I don’t think we’ve seen this level of endeavor in Newport,” Traina says. “Excitement is at a fever pitch.”
Sam Dangremond is a New York–based attorney and journalist
