The entrance drives will receive a full restoration: potted trees will be restored, landscape lighting installed, chains removed and sidewalks resurfaced.

NEWPORT, R.I. — The van Beuren Charitable Foundation recently announced a $1-million grant to The Preservation Society of Newport County to launch the first stage of a multiyear, multimillion-dollar project intended to recapture the original spirit of The Breakers landscape while rehabilitating many lost features of the original design.

The grant was approved at the foundation's November 2017 meeting.

“We are thrilled and encouraged by this gift," Preservation Society CEO and Executive Director Trudy Coxe said in an email. "This endorsement by van Beuren Charitable Foundation means that work can begin almost immediately on this visionary project. Much of the clutter which mars the view down the entrance drive, including the ticket booth and vending shack, will be removed. This opens up the serpentine path and the grand allée for rehabilitation in the very near future.”

The project will rehabilitate The Breakers landscape design by Ernest W. Bowditch to its period of significance, 1893 to 1938. The rehabilitation will reconnect the landscape to the house as intended, and will ensure that visitors have a seamless storytelling experience from the moment they enter the gates until they exit the property.

Following a fire at The Breakers that completely destroyed the house in 1892, Cornelius Vanderbilt II set about rebuilding his estate and transforming the landscape adjacent to his new mansion. He selected prominent American architect Richard Morris Hunt to design the new house. Bowditch worked with Hunt to design a Renaissance-derived Beaux Arts landscape to match the house, including formally ordered parterre garden terraces and the straight approach drives to the front entrance.

The entrance drives will receive a full restoration: potted trees will be restored, landscape lighting installed, chains removed and sidewalks resurfaced. The serpentine path encircling the 13-acre property and “framing” the house will be rehabilitated with a solid surface resembling gravel, featuring highly ordered layers of evergreens and ornamental flowering plants, and trees and shrubs to shape views of the house.

The plan takes advantage of the service entrance to rehabilitate the exit corridor to ensure the visitor experience ends as graciously as it began; one that is safe, gently graded, accessible to all and historically appropriate. The welcome center grove, to the left of the main drive, will be reinforced with additional plantings to screen it from the street and house.