Land’s End, Edith Wharton’s Former Home in Newport, Rhode Island, Sells for $8.6 Million

Many may know about Edith Wharton’s onetime home in the Berkshires, The Mount, which is now a historic house museum. But before The Mount, there was Land’s End, her estate in Newport, Rhode Island. After listing for $11.7 million in May 2019, Land’s End just sold for $8.6 million, which seems like a pretty good deal to us, considering the impressive history and beauty of this home. Of course, it’s nowhere near the price Edith Wharton herself paid — just $80,000!—but that was in 1897, and this is no house of mirth.

Edith Wharton lived in many places, including New York City, Newport, the Berkshires, and Paris, but Newport is where she met architect and interior decorator Ogden Codman Jr., the co-author of her first book, The Decoration of Houses. Wharton was one of Codman Jr.s’ first clients in Newport, shortly after he opened his offices there. He helped Wharton decorate Land’s End because she found the home to be “incurably ugly.”

Wharton detailed the decorating process with Ogden Codman Jr. in her autobiography, A Backward Glance, writing, “We asked him to alter and decorate the house—a somewhat new departure, since the architects of that day looked down on house-decoration as a branch of dress-making, and left the field up to the upholsterers, who crammed every room with curtains, lambrequins, jardinières of artificial plants, wobbly velvet-covered tables littered with silver gew-gaws, and festoons of lace on mantelpieces and dressing tables.”

Land’s End was built in 1880 and it encompasses an impressive 5.6 acres across 12,367 square feet, which includes 11 bedrooms and 9.1 bathrooms. The home features a full basement, a guest house, a balcony, a patio, insulated glass windows, and a pool. Surrounded by lush greenery and a view of the Atlantic Ocean, Land’s End is undoubtedly where we would like to spend our summers, too, just as Edith Wharton did.

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