- [Narrator] Coming up, examine a rare Japanese photo album that was discovered on a bookshelf in one of Newport's cottages.

Go behind the scenes to see the fine detail that goes into curating a single room at The Elms.

And, later, the Warwick Historical Society shares some of the many documents and artifacts from their collections.

This is "Treasures Inside The Museum."

(uplifting music) (uplifting music continues) (uplifting music continues) (peaceful music) (peaceful music continues) Bellevue Avenue in Newport is widely regarded as a virtual living museum.

It's where some of America's wealthiest families built their summer cottages during the Gilded Age.

Today, many of these grand estates live on as museums open to the public for all to see the opulence that once defined the summer playground of American aristocracy.

The Preservation Society of Newport County is entrusted with preserving a number of these historic properties.

Each home is unique in its architecture and in its carefully curated collections.

Whenever possible, original furniture is exhibited in rooms, but getting to that point isn't always an easy task.

Here at The Elms, one of the bedrooms is being restored thanks to a recent discovery and acquisition, - Well, it might not look like much, probably because, as a bed, it doesn't have its beautifully appointed textiles on it, but this is the original bed for Edward Berwind, who had the house The Elms built in 1901 with architect Horace Trumbauer and designer Jules Allard.

Allard's French furniture manufacturing in Paris created this bed custom with a number of other pieces as a suite for this bedroom, and while this was original in 1901 and remained until 1961, the bed and all of its accompanying pieces were sold off at auction when the house was being sold as well, and returned to us by way of gift, a very generous gift, about three years ago.

(peaceful music) We have been taking the opportunity to slowly study the piece of furniture to understand what makes it so important to this space in particular, and the overall design intent of the designer, as well as the intentions of the owner, Edward Berwind, noting some elements that tie it directly into the room, including the choice of wood being the same on the bed as it is on the walls, and some of the design elements on the headboard echoed in the wall paneling too.

We have really embraced the opportunity to strip back the entire room, removing wall coverings that had been placed in the 1980s, and been able to really study the assembly of the space by both the architect as well as the designer.

Seeing the two masked sconces flanking the bed, we know that their width apart determines that the bed should actually be in this position.

There is also a compilation of historically referential design elements here, which make this wholly a Gilded Age item.

The Gilded Age was not really a time when people were directly copying historical ideas, but sort of assembling them together in a way that had never been done before.

So, at the very top, we have these Corinthian capitals, echoing the ideas of classicism, moving down in sort of a tapered way into more rectilinear, and almost gothic references, including the angels that flank either side of the headboard, and then coming across the front of the bed, these sort of medieval linen fold designs as well as the beautiful wreath and bow knot, and this cartouche that, again, sort of hybridize other historical types together.

So there are just many clues that we're looking to sort of assemble back together to solve the mystery that is this bed.

- [Narrator] Solving a mystery like this can be challenging, especially when some of the clues can be misleading.

- Sometimes we hit a dead end and sometimes our hypothesis is wrong, so we have to start all over again, but sometimes there is a thread that gets pulled and we find it unraveling something really incredible, and just the start of having these pieces of furniture returned to The Elms is that thread that we're still pulling.

(gentle music) - [Narrator] Over at Kingscote, a smaller yet no less spectacular mansion is still revealing new stories that offer insight into Newport history.

- I was upstairs in the children's room at Kingscote, searching the volumes on the shelves, trying to learn more about what the kings were reading about Asia in the mid to late 19th century, and I found at the bottom of a shelf, buried under many other albums, photographic and otherwise, this absolute treasure from mid-19th-century Japan.

(gentle Japanese folk music) The album was collected by David King Jr., owner of Kingscote, during his travels abroad.

He worked and traded in China for about 15 years, and in that time, he also took three trips to Japan.

(gentle Japanese folk music continues) There's a wonderful range of photographs of studio portraits of Japanese individuals wearing the kind of costumes and performing the native customs of Japan.

We have here a Japanese girl's picnic party.

We have a general view of Nagasaki.

This is a wonderful photograph of a Japanese girl traveling in a sedan chair, which would've really appealed to Westerners like David King.

Here, we have a photograph of Mississippi Bay.

Mississippi Bay was the port where Commodore Matthew Perry, who was a Newporter, dropped anchor in Japan when he forcibly opened Japan to Western commerce.

(ethereal music) One fascinating thing that the album tells us is that David King Jr.

took an interest in Japanese domestic architecture at least 10 years before he commissioned McKim, Mead & White to design this stunning dining room in the Japanese style, and I wanna turn your attention to a photograph on the interior, which is captioned "Japanese cottage on a creek in Yokohama," and if you look closely, you can see certain parallel stylistic continuities between the cottage represented in the photograph and the dining room in David King's Newport cottage.

So I wanna call your attention here to these screen walls which have been flung open to nature, and I want you to look at the back of the dining room here and see these walls made of roughly 1,500 opalescent glass brick tiles, which give the effect of the dining room, you know, breathing, opening out to nature, (ethereal music continues) The wood framing of the dining room, the use of these rich natural woods is another link to Japanese domestic architecture.

Also, just that the spareness and simplicity of the dining room is very Japan-esque.

(ethereal music decrescendos) - [Narrator] If there's a treasure that sometimes gets overlooked at these spectacular homes, it's likely the grounds and landscaping.

- Every house within the Newport mansions is not just a house, it's an estate, and that house is placed on an acreage that was fully operational during the Gilded Age.

That means it had superintendents and gardeners and seasonal horticultural displays and parties were held on the grounds.

So the grounds were really fully developed just as the house was, and Gilded Age people had a great respect and admiration for horticulture and collected the best of the best in terms of trees and shrubbery, and they also hide the best landscape designers.

- [Narrator] The Elms is surrounded by vast lawns and meticulously manicured gardens with sculptures and water features.

(water burbling) At Rosecliff, the entrance is graced with flower beds and fountains, and at Marble House, the grounds include a tea house nestled along the cliffs overlooking the ocean.

At Chateau-sur-Mer, there's a landscape feature that can best be seen from the air.

It's called Sod Maze.

- This is an earthworks, a site-specific earth sculpture created by Richard Fleischner in 1974 as part of the Monumental sculpture exhibition, which was all across Newport in that year.

Environmental art or site-specific art or earthscapes, there are lots of different names for what the movement was called, but it was artists who were working out on the land, doing site-specific work that was not tradable because it was built on a specific site.

For instance, Sod Maze was here at Chateau-sur-Mer.

It couldn't be bought and sold, and they considered that an ideal that, you know, they were upholding, that their art was beyond commerce.

(peaceful music) (peaceful music continues) I think it's important that these landscapes live on and they do change.

They're not fixed in time as the houses are or the furnishings of the houses are.

Trees grow, landscapes evolve, and that's the case here.

This was added in 1974 as part of another movement, the outdoor sculpture movement, and also environmentalism tangentially, and so it's important historically, so we want to keep it in that context.

- [Narrator] From its completion in 1852, Chateau-sur-Mer remained one of the most splendid homes in Newport until The Breakers was built about 40 years later.

A portrait in the morning room here offers a little insight into the life of the owner of this spectacular palace.

- This is a painting of Cornelius Vanderbilt II by John Singer Sargent.

Cornelius Vanderbilt II and his wife Alice were owners of The Breakers in Newport.

It was painted in the summer of 1890 over seven sittings between July and August, probably at the Vanderbilts' Portsmouth-based farm called Oakland Farm.

It's a marvelous portrait of a man who was known to be stern, serious-minded, pious.

I think all of those aspects of his character resonate in this somewhat stiff but also maybe a bit genial portrait.

Sargent was by far the most acclaimed portraitist of his day.

In fact, when this painting was on exhibition in 1891 at the National Academy of Design, another famous portraitist named John White Alexander described the painting as "quite wonderful if it was by another hand," but judging by Sargent's high standards, he felt it was maybe a little bit lacking, and he wondered if Sargent wasn't altogether in sympathy with his subject, if Sargent didn't altogether take a liking to Cornelius Vanderbilt, and I think those questions resonate with some of the imagery in the portrait.

It really is a wonderful likeness of Cornelius Vanderbilt II.

You see his closely shorn dark hair.

You see his aquiline nose, his gray steely eyes that reminded his contemporaries of his grandfather, the Commodore, but I think in other ways, Sargent may be gently ribbing Cornelius Vanderbilt II.

I want you to notice his hand in gesture.

Notice how Cornelius Vanderbilt's fingers plunge between the buttons of his waist coat, which is still buttoned shut.

This is a rather less elegant gesture than the traditional hand in coat gesture that we see in aristocratic male portraiture dating back to the 18th century.

Generally, that coat is unbuttoned, and the gesture is more easy and more graceful, and we sense a lot of tension in that hand, a lot of kind of tension in the rigidity of his figure, and I wonder if Sargent isn't suggesting that there might be cracks in his social performance of gentility.

- [Narrator] Just down the street at Marble House, in a home built by William Vanderbilt for his wife Alva, a set of portraits in the dining room are worthy of a close examination.

- These are companion portraits of the Duke and Duchess Mantua by Hyacinthe Rigaud, who is a 17th and 18th-century French portrait painter, highly sought after and acclaimed in both the royal and surrounding court environment, and the wife and husband who are depicted here were accomplished about 1706 by Rigaud and members of his studio.

The duchess is shown in a very elegant position, having a lot of symbolism in the portrait itself that indicates her rank, including sort of front and center the red rose or carnation in her breast, indicating either fertility as well as loyalty and fidelity.

That is echoed by the small, very well-behaved dog on her lap.

That would also symbolize not only status, but also one's fidelity as a loyal partner.

Hard to see from far away, but up close, right behind the dog is also a strand of pearls, which, at this time, pearls had the same value as precious metals like gold.

Likewise, the ermine fur that lines the cape that she's sitting on is just another indicator of the incredible influence and wealth that she had, not only in her own right, but what she brought to her marriage and what her marriage provided her.

However, it was a very short-lived marriage.

The Duke of Mantua was caught up in many of the political upheavals during the period and was exiled, and his wife returned to her native Alsace region in France, and the two actually died quite soon after these portraits were completed.

We believe that they were probably commissioned a bit earlier, probably at the time of the marriage, around 1704, which is also most likely evident in the duke's painting.

Very faintly in the background, there is a battle scene that was painted by one of Rigaud's studio assistants who also dies in 1704.

So all these little clues bring us together as to when the paintings were painted.

Their life after that and how they get to Marble House is still a little bit of a mystery.

(solemn music) When you visit Marble House and are in the dining room, these are some of the first portraits that you're going to encounter as a part of your tour, and we encourage our guests to take a moment and stop and reflect when they see these paintings, along with the other works that are in this room and through the house.

Now, we interpret these spaces as historic house museums, but in reality, they are museums with highly acclaimed, world-renowned artists throughout history, depicting important individuals as well.

So, the house being the largest object of all, please be certain to take those moments to appreciate the smaller pieces that are inside of equal or even greater importance.

(solemn music continues) (uplifting music) (peaceful music) - [Narrator] Hidden beneath some old maple trees near an historic cemetery in Warwick, Rhode Island is the John Waterman Arnold House.

- We have been occupying the house since 1965.

At the time, the city was gonna burn the house down and the Warwick Historical Society was fortunate enough to be able to acquire it, so we've been here ever since.

- [Narrator] Today, this is home to the Warwick Historical Society's extensive collection of local artifacts.

- I think it's good to come here.

It's good to see the different things if you're interested in history.

This is the Warwick repository for that.

- [Narrator] The Historical Society also maintains a small library here that includes a collection of old records, including some early tax archives from the city.

Also found here are the ledger books that offer a glimpse of part of the city's waterfront history.

- A gentleman by the name of Reverend Moses Bicksley, who was a Baptist minister from Cranston, he had it in his head that he wanted to create a community similar to Oak Bluffs on Martha's Vineyard, and so, in doing so, he got together with some other people and they purchased a peninsula into Greenwich Bay and they established a community there, and one of the first things they did was they built a hotel and they called it Ye Olde Buttonwoods House.

- [Narrator] But that hotel wasn't much of a success, and a few years later, it was sold.

- And the person who bought it demolished it and built a new hotel.

The advent of the Warwick Railroad certainly helped, and the train came from Apponaug into Buttonwoods.

(gentle music) A lot of the people that stayed there at the Buttonwoods Hotel came for the water, the views, the cool air that they weren't getting in the cities, certainly.

(gentle music continues) The registers we have here list the people who stayed at the hotel, the guests, and there are names in here that are so familiar with most Rhode Islanders from Rhode Island history.

The Lippitts, the Chafees, the Ives, the Browns, the Spragues.

They stayed here, and interestingly enough, they didn't stay for a day or a weekend, like we may do today.

They stayed for two weeks to a month.

One particular entry that I find rather interesting is in very large letters.

This gentleman wrote his name.

"John Londrergah, 266 Madison Avenue, Flushing, Long Island, New York, USA, North America, Western Hemisphere, the Universe, Amen."

It gives you an insight into life as it was back in the late 19th century, because as I said, this hotel was built in 1871 and into the mid 20th century, because it ended in 1950, and at the very end of this, the desk clerk, when it ran through the 1950 season, and so in September, the desk clerk wrote, "Exit with happy memories and best wishes to my successor, Ellen Pearson."

That was the very last entry, and that was on September 2nd of 1950, and that was the end of the Ye Olde Buttonwoods House.

- The ink is fading.

- [Narrator] Early on in the establishment of the historical society, people would occasionally bring something from their personal belongings, things that may have been tucked away for generations.

- This is Benedict Arnold's own personal bible from the Revolution.

It's been in the house.

It was donated by a descendant of Benedict Arnold.

In the inside front cover, people had written in it so that we know that that's where it actually came from.

I mean, it's a printed bible, but it was in his possession during the Revolution.

- [Narrator] A much bigger book on display contains a large collection of maps.

- They began making these maps in 1867.

(gentle music) This does have some age to it and it wasn't stored under the best conditions.

It probably got wet sometime, and you see how warped it is and the edges are discolored and the like, but it's still in remarkably good condition.

- [Narrator] While these maps had a very specific use, a closer look can reveal information beyond their original purpose.

- We are looking at a Sanborn fire map, and the original intent was just for that, for fire insurance purposes, and you notice these are all in yellow, and the color code for yellow would've been a wood frame structure.

Others are a pink color or a red color that would indicate that they were made of stone or brick or something like that.

The reference they are today is incredible because this one was produced in 1922, so we can actually look here and see the structures that were here a century ago and how the town has evolved and changed.

You notice here that this is an actual road.

It's kind of dashed in, and you notice that the homes were along there, but these were all rental properties.

They all have different names like Seaview or Nightmay or something like that.

They all had different specific names, and they would rent them out for a week or two to people from the city that wanted to come for a summer vacation.

Warwick was a summer destination.

You could come here and attend a clam bake or have a bowl of chowder, catch some nice sea breezes, and spend a, this was all a beach area, actually.

On one of the maps, that was actually a grange, which shows that Warwick was, at one time, an agricultural community, but then it kind of became a summer destination.

and today, of course, it's more of a residential or suburban community than anything else, but you can kind of see that evolution of it.

(gentle music continues) - [Narrator] Each room in the Arnold House features an eclectic mix of historical pieces.

There's an extensive collection of artifacts that tell the story of the Westcott family and their many businesses.

Upstairs, a bedroom is full of period furniture and textile samples.

There's a series of photographs that chronicle how the house has changed over the decades, and a small exhibit featuring memorabilia from the Rocky Point amusement park that brought smiles to generations, and among the many documents are a collection of letters from the Civil War.

- These were letters that were written home by young boys during the Civil War.

He wrote to his father and he would tell of his experience.

By the sound of it, he sounds like he's very young.

(solemn horn music) - [Voiceover] August 6th, 1864.

Dear parents, I suppose you will be surprised to hear that I am with Admiral Faragat's fleet in Mobile Bay.

After we got inside the shallows, a rebel gunboat tried to ram our fleet and get to the city, but it was a failure.

She had two men who were all stove to pieces.

Their brains and flesh scattered all over the boat inside.

I hope I shall be able to live through this campaign and see the taking of Mobile.

From your son, Daniel.

- He's describing what's going on around him, so you get a firsthand impression of how horrible it must have been.

These were not professional military men.

These were just kids.

- [Narrator] This framed piece is also from local Civil War history.

- This is one of our more recent acquisitions, a drumhead that was from the Civil War era.

A drummer by the name of Corporal William Dickerson played this during the Civil War.

(lively drum music) The drummers were the Signal Corps.

During a battle, you would have a fog over the battlefield of gun smoke and the noise and the confusion, but you can hear the drumbeat over that, and that drumbeat would signal to the junior officers and the sergeants up ahead on the front line what to do and how to do it.

So that was the purpose of the drummers.

- [Narrator] The John Waterman Arnold House and members of the Historical Society have made it their mission to enrich the community by preserving local history so future generations can better appreciate our collective past.

(uplifting music) (uplifting music continues) (gentle music) (upbeat music)