It has been a life-long pleasure to live in the shade of these magnificent mansions, to mark and celebrate some of the major moments of my life in glorious Newport, Rhode Island, and to play with my children—now grown men—beneath the beeches.
The Beeches as rendered here is, in fact, The Elms, the summer `cottage" of Mr. and Mrs. Edward Julius Berwind of Philadelphia and New York. Designed by Horace Trumbauer under the direction of the Berwinds to model it after the French Chateau d"Asnieres outside Paris, The Elms construction was completed in 1901 for a cost of $1.4 million dollars. Its interior and exterior have been depicted with detailed accuracy under the auspices of The Beeches. However, the Berwinds, for all that history has recorded them, are nothing like the inhabitants of The B
