Mark Hopkins was known as one of the "Big Four" in San Francisco in the late 19th century. He was one of the founders of the Central Pacific Railroad. Hopkins choose to build his mansion on the fashionable Nob Hill where is fellow multimillionaires also resided. Sadly Hopkins would not see his mansion and it was completed in 1878 after his death. The mansion was a show piece which anyone can tell from the photographs. It survived the 1906 earthquake but sadly was destroyed in the fire that followed in the days after.

Several years ago I toured some of the mansions of Newport, Rhode Island – the place where anyone who was anyone had a summer “cottage” in the waning years of the 1800s. The very wealthy heirs of New York Central railroad magnate Cornelius Vanderbilt, were of course, no exception. William Kissam Vanderbilt had a mansion in Newport called Marble House, and his elder brother Cornelius II had The Breakers. While Marble House is remarkably lavish, it lacks the typical Vanderbilt aesthetic that one would find elsewhere – mostly because the home was designed for and by William’s wife Alva. The Breakers, on the other hand, has many of the obvious symbols representing both transportation and the Vanderbilts – the caduceus, acorns, and oak leaves.

Sketch by architect Richard Morris Hunt of the gates for The Breakers
Cornelius Vanderbilt II bought the property on which the Breakers sits in 1885. The house on the property was wooden, and burned down in 1892. After that fire, Vanderbilt commissioned Richard Morris Hunt to design a new summer home. Designed to resemble the palaces of Italy, the home had a total of 70 rooms and five floors. The Breakers is certainly one of the most extravagant homes in Newport, a symbol of the Gilded Age, and a representation of the fortunes amassed by the railroad barons of the United States.