Rosecliff stands on the cliffs of Newport, set back on a broad lawn that descends to the Atlantic. The house did not evolve over generations and it did not come from inherited architectural taste. It was conceived with a clear purpose by one person. That person was Theresa Alice Fair Oelrichs, known in society as Tessie. She selected the site, chose the architect, directed the plan, determined the scale, and understood the role the house would play in Newport. Theresa Alice F

Dorothy "Dot" King aka Anna Marie Keenan Dorothy “Dot” King, born Anna Marie Keenan in Manhattan, was reported as having been born in either 1894 or 1896 . Her parents were Irish American, and she grew up in modest circumstances in New York City. In her teens, Dot worked as a shop model in Manhattan dress salons, a position that placed her directly in view of wealthy customers and theatrical costumers. These workplaces connected her to the social environments of Broadway an

Clarence Hungerford Mackay Clarence Hungerford Mackay was born in San Francisco on April 17, 1874. His father, John William Mackay, had begun life in poverty in Dublin and crossed the Atlantic with almost nothing. In Nevada he took part in the discovery of the Comstock Lode, the great silver deposit that changed the economic history of the American West. The mine made him one of the wealthiest men in the country. With that fortune he entered the drawing rooms and salons of Ne

Myron Charles Taylor Early Years and Education Myron Charles Taylor was born on January 18, 1874, in Lyons, New York, into a family of modest means and steady principle. His parents valued education and self-reliance, and these virtues defined him throughout his life. He attended public schools in Lyons before enrolling at Cornell University, where he studied law and earned his LL.B. degree in 1894. Taylor displayed from the beginning a meticulous mind and an unshakable sense

The Girl in the Red Velvet Swing – A Gilded Age Scandal In the glittering world of New York’s Gilded Age, beauty, power, and obsession collided in tragedy. My new post, “Evelyn Nesbit and the Murder of Stanford White,” tells the haunting true story of a young model whose life became the center of America’s most sensational crime. Discover how Evelyn’s beauty captivated an architect, consumed a millionaire, and left behind a legacy that still echoes through time.

Charles Albert Coffin, co-founder and the first president of the General Electric Company, was one of the most influential industrial leaders of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Born in Fairfield, Maine, on December 31, 1844, he was the son of Albert Coffin and Anstrus Varney Coffin. As a young man he showed an aptitude for business and enterprise. At the age of eighteen he moved to Lynn, Massachusetts, where he joined his uncle Charles E. Coffin's shoe comp