The Chateauesque mansion that played Collinwood in Dark Shadows, with a chapel-organ ghost story
Ruggles Avenue, Newport, RI 02840
Research updated June 2026
Age
All Ages
Cost
Free
Private property with no public tours. The mansion can be glimpsed from sections of the Cliff Walk; do not enter the grounds.
Access
Limited Access
Cliff Walk path along the shoreline; the estate itself is gated and private
Equipment
Photos OK
Est. 1925 · Gilded Age Chateauesque architecture · Dark Shadows filming location · Newport Cliff Walk estate
Seaview Terrace was completed in 1925 on Ruggles Avenue in Newport for Edson Bradley, who had made his fortune in the liquor trade. The architect George Champlin Mason Jr. expanded an earlier wood house into a stone Chateauesque mansion modeled on sixteenth-century French chateaux, complete with a private chapel. It is one of the largest of Newport's surviving Gilded Age houses.
Julia Williams Bradley, Edson's wife, died in August 1929. Her funeral was held in the mansion's chapel. Edson Bradley spent only a few more summers at the house before his own death in 1935, and the estate passed through later owners.
From 1966 to 1971 the mansion's exterior stood in for the fictional Collinwood Mansion in ABC's Gothic soap opera Dark Shadows, fixing the building in the memory of a generation of viewers. The property later became known as Carey Mansion after a subsequent owner, and for years portions were leased to Salve Regina University. In the 2010s it was offered for sale as a private estate. It remains in private hands and is not open for public tours.
Sources
The mansion's haunted reputation centers on Julia Williams Bradley, whose funeral was held in the chapel after her 1929 death. Local accounts describe organ music heard from the empty chapel and attribute it to her; the story is repeated in Newport tourism and haunted-site coverage rather than in any verified investigation log.
During the decades the building was occupied, including its long period leased to Salve Regina University, students and staff reported the kinds of activity common to large old houses: footsteps in empty corridors, whispers, knocking, and shadow figures moving through the ballrooms and stairwells. These reports are anecdotal and tied to a building large enough to generate plenty of ordinary noise.
The property has drawn paranormal television. The Travel Channel's Ghost Nation featured Seaview Terrace in an episode broadcast on October 31, 2020, and the Syfy network had earlier used the mansion as a location. With the estate now privately held and closed to the public, current accounts derive from its occupied years and from the documented broadcasts rather than from ongoing access.
Notable Entities
Media Appearances
View the Chateauesque rooflines and towers of Carey Mansion from public sections of the Cliff Walk. The estate is private with no tours; the exterior is the same facade that stood in for Collinwood in Dark Shadows.
Every HauntBound history is researched from documented sources. We clearly separate verified historical fact from paranormal folklore.
Newport, RI
Beechwood is a Gilded Age estate at 580 Bellevue Avenue in Newport, originally built in 1851 for New York merchant Daniel Parrish. After fire damage in 1855 it was rebuilt and was acquired in 1881 by William Backhouse Astor, Jr. Mrs. Caroline Astor used Beechwood as the social capital of New York's elite. Larry Ellison purchased the estate in 2010 and is restoring it as a private art museum.
Louisville, KY
The four-bedroom Chateauesque-style residence at 1228 South 3rd Street was built in 1895 and is associated by name with the Jacob Widmer family, one of several German-American households that settled along Old Louisville's S. 3rd Street corridor in the late nineteenth century. The house is one of the showpieces of the largest contiguous Victorian-era preservation district in the United States.
Providence, RI
The Edward Dexter House is a Federal-style wood-frame mansion built 1795-1797 originally at the corner of George and Prospect Streets. In 1860 the house was sawed in half and moved in two sections to its current location at 72 Waterman Street. It has been owned by the Rhode Island School of Design and used variously as administrative space and student housing.