I hadn’t paid attention Stephan And Christine Schwarzman‘s Newport restoration project until my partner Bill Cohan reported on the big housewarming party the couple threw last week at Miramar, their newly renovated 8-acre bluffside estate on Bellevue Avenue. As Bill suggested, the house is quite a conundrum for a couple who already own residences in Nantucket, East Hampton, Saint-Tropez, Jamaica and an estate in the English countryside, not to mention their primary residence on Park Avenue. Were they really abandoning the big billionaires’ summer retreats for sleepy, old-fashioned Newport, as an article in Air Mail had originally suggested?
Probably not, so why the concerted publicity campaign? After reading Bill’s article about the christening of Miramar – which is just over a mile from the most famous house in Newport – Vanderbilt’s‘ old Breakers—I noticed a few other salacious stories about the party, the house (which the Schwarzmans bought for $27 million in 2021), and their decision to turn the house into a museum that will be open to the public after their deaths. A few of the reports included quotes from Ian Wardropperthe outgoing director of the Frick Museum in New York, where Schwarzman is a trustee. “They’re taking this really seriously,” Wardropper was quoted as saying in two different media outlets, “and trying to get the very best objects they can find to make this house sing.”
