Gilded Age Cottage Now Closed for Restoration
580 Bellevue Avenue, Newport, RI 02840
Age
All Ages
Cost
Free
No public access. Visitors can view the exterior from Bellevue Avenue or the Cliff Walk.
Access
Limited Access
Sidewalk along Bellevue Avenue
Equipment
Photos OK
Est. 1851 · Gilded Age Architecture · Astor Family Legacy · Newport Cottage Tradition
Beechwood was built in 1851 for New York merchant Daniel Parrish on a promontory at 580 Bellevue Avenue, Newport. After a fire in 1855 the villa was rebuilt and expanded. In 1881 it was acquired by William Backhouse Astor, Jr., whose wife Caroline Schermerhorn Astor used Beechwood as the central stage for the social codes of late nineteenth-century New York and Newport. The phrase "the Four Hundred," a term often attributed to Caroline Astor's social secretary Ward McAllister, was associated with the size of her ballroom in this house.
After the Astor era the property changed hands several times. In 1981 Paul Madden purchased Beechwood and partnered with the University of Rhode Island's Drama Department to launch the Beechwood Theatre Company, an immersive living-history museum in which costumed actors portrayed Astor family members and household staff. Madden's living-history operation ran for nearly thirty years and welcomed roughly a million visitors.
In January 2010, Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison purchased the estate for $10.5 million. Ellison's stated plan is to convert Beechwood into a private nonprofit art museum to display his collection of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century European and American art. A permanent certificate of occupancy was issued in December 2017 after extensive restoration work. As of 2026, Beechwood remains closed to the public, with no announced public-opening date.
Sources
Beechwood's haunted reputation took shape almost entirely during the Madden-era living-history museum, when actors and staff worked in the house daily for nearly three decades. Their accounts cluster around a small set of recurring events.
Doors throughout the house were observed reopening after being closed and latched, particularly during morning preparations before tours. Cold spots were reported most often in the ballroom, the same space that defined Caroline Astor's social hierarchy. Disembodied voices were heard in upstairs rooms after closing.
Two apparitions are named in published accounts. The first is a female figure in a maid's uniform, observed in service corridors and described as engaged in routine domestic tasks. The second is a woman in a yellow turn-of-the-century ballroom gown, sometimes identified informally as Caroline Astor or her granddaughter Madeleine Astor Force, who survived the sinking of the Titanic. No source treats these identifications as established fact; they are the staff's best guesses overlaid on a long-occupied house.
The Atlantic Paranormal Society investigated Beechwood for the second season of Ghost Hunters on Syfy, and the episode entered the broader cycle of Newport ghost-tour folklore. With the estate's 2010 sale to Larry Ellison and the closure of the living-history museum, the venue's documented activity stream effectively ended; current accounts derive from the Madden-era period and from observers who can no longer enter the property.
Notable Entities
Media Appearances
View Beechwood from the public sidewalk along Bellevue Avenue. The 1851 mansion is undergoing a long-running private restoration and is closed to visitors. A glimpse of the seaward façade is possible from sections of the Cliff Walk.
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