A 19th century shingle-style home in Newport, Rhode Island, came to market Thursday after being fully restored by its owner for $8.25 million.
The stone-and-shingle home on Red Cross Drive was built in 1886 as a grand residence for American artist Samuel Coleman. He had commissioned the legendary architectural studio McKim, Mead and White, the firm behind the Washington Square Arch in New York’s Greenwich Village that built a variety of Gilded Age estates for New York’s aristocracy.
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The nearly 8,500-square-foot mansion features a mix of wood-shingle, masonry and red brick in its facade, along with classical elements such as columns and porticos.
“At that time there was a lot of experimentation in Newport, particularly shingle-style evolved from this area,” said the seller, Mark Horan of Horan Building Company. “You see a lot of variety in stone, word, hand-carvings, inlay, mix of wood and masonry. All that is evident in this house.”
The mansion had been converted into a seven-unit rental in the 1970s, and was serving as such when Horan purchased it in 2023 for $3.25 million.
He spent the next year rehabilitating the home, which included work on the structural elements with a new roof and new siding, as well as restoring or replicating as much original detail as could be reconstructed, Horan said. That included detailed millwork, masonry and moldings throughout the home, scalloped and sawtooth shingles, the red-brick chimneys, a grand wooden staircase at the entrance, and wood-carved and glass inlays along the facade.
The home now features eight bedrooms, divided between a main 7,000-square-foo-plus residence with six en suite rooms, and two private apartments that can be rented or used as an in-law suite or staff apartment, Horan said. There is also a fully updated kitchen, a media room, an optional gym and a generous yard with a pool deck and outdoor kitchen all bordered by an original ivy-covered stone wall.
While McKim, Mead and White are recognizable for their Neoclassical landmarks, they are also originators of the shingle-style New England home, of which this home—one of five by the firm in this pocket of Newport—showcases an early iteration.
“Newport’s a great little treasure we have, all this great architecture in such a concentrated area,” Horan said.
“There was so much money that was spent here in Newport, from New York’s aristocrats. They were hiring the best architects in the world to build these homes,” added listing agent Eric Kirman of Compass.
That continued to be the case until recently—with mostly New Yorkers and New Englanders, with a smattering of Floridians, being drawn to Newport—but today, luxury buyers are coming from much farther afield, Kirman said.
Samuel Colman was a 19th-century American painter from Portland, Maine, who exemplified the Hudson River School, one of America’s first homegrown art movements. Colman is best known for his mastery of watercolors, and particularly his depictions of the Hudson River.