Belcourt is a former summer cottage designed by architect Richard Morris Hunt for Oliver Hazard Perry Belmont and located on Bellevue Avenue in Newport, Rhode Island. Construction was begun in 1891 and completed in 1894, and it was intended to be used for only six to eight weeks of the year. Belcourt was designed in a multitude of European styles and periods; it features a heavy emphasis on French Renaissance and Gothic decor, with further borrowings from German, English, and Italian design. In the Gilded Age, the castle was noted for its extensive stables and carriage areas, which were incorporated into the main structure.
Ledge Road (west) façade
1895, shortly after completion
2022
Rear of the mansion (east façade) faces Bellevue Avenue
Richard Morris Hunt was an American architect of the nineteenth century and an eminent figure in the history of architecture of the United States. He helped shape New York City with his designs for the 1902 entrance façade and Great Hall of the Metropolitan Museum of Art's Fifth Avenue building, the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty, and many Fifth Avenue mansions since destroyed.
Richard Morris Hunt
The William K. Vanderbilt House or the Petit Chateau in 1886, 660 Fifth Avenue, New York City
Portrait of Richard Morris Hunt by John Singer Sargent (1895).
Richard Morris Hunt Memorial, Fifth Avenue, New York City