Few American resort towns carry their Gilded Age inheritance as self-consciously as Newport, Rhode Island, which makes the choice to convert a stately 1909 Colonial Revival building on Mary Street into The Vanderbilt — part of the Auberge Resorts Collection — a quietly knowing one. The four-storey red brick facade, with its white-painted portico, dormered roofline, and symmetrical fenestration, carries the measured authority of a private men's club rather than a grand hotel, and that register runs deliberately through every design decision inside. Roman and Williams Guild, the New York studio behind the interiors, worked in a palette anchored to deep navy and aged teal, pulling the forty-three rooms into an atmosphere closer to a well-appointed Newport cottage than a conventional hotel. Four-poster beds in darkened walnut sit against grid-patterned wallcoverings in midnight blue, flanked by marble-topped nightstands and tortoiseshell ceramic lamps; built-in cabinetry in celadon sage keeps the hardware in brushed brass. The dining room pushes darker still — indigo lacquered panelling, scrolled mahogany restaurant chairs, a curved brass-railed bar, and mounted fauna lending the space a faintly theatrical hunting-lodge atmosphere. Against that, the conservatory room offers a full tonal reversal: white-painted brick, trailing Boston ferns suspended from the ceiling, black-and-white chequerboard floors, and green velvet banquettes opening onto the garden through walls of steel-framed glass.

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Inspired by the insatiable wanderlust and rebellious spirit of Alfred Gwynne Vanderbilt, the historic downtown mansion once owned by the businessman and scion has been reinterpreted for the modern era as a lively and stylish social destination. From a secret bar tucked into a corner of the sumptuous Doris Duke-inspired parlor to the specially-commissioned series of mysterious and moody old world still lifes sprinkled throughout the foyer and lounge, the scene at The Vanderbilt is crackling with coastal curiosities and alluring eccentricities waiting to be discovered.