Tasteful Friends: the 'Dark Shadows' house is foe sale! Boo!
This castle-like estate on Ruggles Avenue has donned many names: Seaview Terrace, Burnham-by-the-Sea, Carey Mansion. (For fans of “Dark Shadows,” the horror soap opera that use its facade as an exterior set, it will always be Collinwood Mansion.)
But before all that, it was known as Aladdin’s Palace and it occupied a city block in Washington D.C. Its whiskey baron owner, Edson Bradley, bought and renovated the palatial mansion with hopes of avoiding Prohibition in the nation’s capital. But D.C. went dry and, like a genie summoned from its bottle, Bradley had a fleet of workers dismantle whole rooms from the house, transport them 400 miles and tack them onto an existing mansion in Newport. (Those rooms, it should be noted, had been imported from France and installed in D.C. just twenty years earlier.) The Frankensteinian task of adding onto one mansion with pieces of another — while also melding Jacobean, French Renaissance and Elizabethan Revival influences to a cohesive Chateauesque whole — earned its architect a president’s medal from the American League of Architects, per Seaview CARES,and a nod in Ripley’s Believe it or Not.
“There’s so much history here,” says Vin Fraioli of Edge Realty RI, which listed the property late last month. He mentions the mansion — the largest privately owned estate in Newport — was used by the U.S. Army during World War II and, for a spell, it also housed a girls’ boarding school. In the 1970s, it was purchased by the Carey family, who leased the mansion’s performance hall and stables to Salve Regina University. The family resumed occupancy in 2009 and, now, Seaview Terrace is on the market for its next steward.
| by Anonymous | reply 26 | January 24, 2022 12:44 AM
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I hope whoever owns it next re-names it Collinwood.
| by Anonymous | reply 2 | September 9, 2021 1:30 AM
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The guy was obsessed with real estate. Whisky was very, very good to him.
| by Anonymous | reply 3 | September 9, 2021 2:05 AM
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I just saw that this was for sale and thought maybe Tasteful Friends had "done" it.
Interesting to see the interiors and find them better than expected, though I had seen old photos of the place more in it's prime.
Watching Dark Shadows as a child (as was done but every future Data Lounger of my generation, it seems), I always wanted the Dark Shadows interiors to match the promise of the exterior. The pleasant but tight entry hall in the series, for example, and the adjoining drawing room were much too modest for the exterior. Not so the real McCoy.
| by Anonymous | reply 4 | January 22, 2022 4:07 PM
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You wouldn't have hit the "e" if you didn't have those fat whore fingers, OP
| by Anonymous | reply 6 | January 22, 2022 4:10 PM
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I love it but I don't think I could live in it. It's like a great opera set. Which I suppose it mostly was.
Hope it's preserved and the new owners don't decide they want a modern interior with fucking can lights.
| by Anonymous | reply 7 | January 22, 2022 4:11 PM
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Strange, I’ve watched so many episodes of Dark Shadows over the years and own a lot of DVDs, and never thought to look up where this building used in the iconic intro is actually located. Guess I’m not the obsessed fan I’d thought I was!
| by Anonymous | reply 8 | January 22, 2022 4:18 PM
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Cool place, beautiful ceilings in many of the rooms, but too big to be practical
| by Anonymous | reply 10 | January 22, 2022 4:44 PM
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Does it come with the window treatments?
I just can't afford to buy curtains for all those windows..
| by Anonymous | reply 11 | January 22, 2022 4:50 PM
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Does it come with Dark Shadow's actress Grayson Hall?
I need her to be overemoting in every single room!
| by Anonymous | reply 12 | January 22, 2022 4:53 PM
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Well, at $29.9 million we'll have to eat beans for a while.
But we simply can't let the Collins family home be sold to someone else!
| by Anonymous | reply 13 | January 22, 2022 4:57 PM
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Does it come with the Collins family cemetery...
about which Roger Collins famously said on air,
"Yonder lie the bodies of my incestors."
| by Anonymous | reply 14 | January 22, 2022 4:59 PM
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Is the East Wing still closed up?
| by Anonymous | reply 16 | January 22, 2022 5:04 PM
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It's magnificent, but what would anyone do with all that space? Maybe *carefully* *tastefully* break it into high-end condos? If done right, it could be incredible.
| by Anonymous | reply 17 | January 22, 2022 5:05 PM
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There's a really neat young woman named Victoria Winters who will watch your children...
She's works for practically nothing!
| by Anonymous | reply 18 | January 22, 2022 5:07 PM
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Is The Blue Whale just down the road? Let’s have a drink and a chat.
| by Anonymous | reply 19 | January 22, 2022 5:13 PM
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I think its fabulous,but 43,000+ sq feet ??? WHO could live in that much space ?
| by Anonymous | reply 20 | January 22, 2022 6:19 PM
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“I ran home after school to watch Dark Shadows”
| by Anonymous | reply 21 | January 22, 2022 6:23 PM
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I’m pretty sure this was on American Pickers a few years ago during its restoration. The owner was a cunt.
| by Anonymous | reply 22 | January 22, 2022 6:26 PM
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[quote] Does it come with Dark Shadow's actress Grayson Hall?
Yes, and with several doctor's bags filled with tranquilizers, since she needs them constantly to administer to overwrought ingenues (and Willy).
| by Anonymous | reply 23 | January 22, 2022 6:26 PM
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Took Piano lessons here, it was an amazing place, but I always remember being cold and I hated my piano teacher!!!
| by Anonymous | reply 24 | January 22, 2022 6:27 PM
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R17, that is done in the UK, where a big stately is turned into apartments (which are still huge.)
| by Anonymous | reply 25 | January 22, 2022 7:20 PM
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Megan Draper on "Mad Men" was desperate for a part in "Dark Shadows"
| by Anonymous | reply 26 | January 24, 2022 12:44 AM
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