The Elms Is Ready to Talk Back

For more than a century, The Elms has asked visitors to read the room. The carved interiors, French furnishings, and elaborate collections offer clues about the people who once spent their summers there, though much of daily life still requires a little imagination. This fall, the house will start filling in some of those blanks itself. Beginning November 16, visitors will hear conversations, encounter moving images, and even catch scents designed to evoke a bustling Gilded Age home.

The Elms Experience will weave sound design, character dialogue, video projections, physical installations, music, and custom scents through the National Historic Landmark, adding new layers to rooms that already carry plenty of visual drama.

The Preservation Society of Newport County developed the experience with Emmy-winning creative studio Digital Kitchen, drawing on nearly three years of research into the Berwind family and the staff, guests, designers, and others connected to the estate. Rather than turning the mansion into a high-tech attraction, the team designed the new elements to work around the existing architecture and collections.

That distinction matters at The Elms, where grandeur has always been easy to spot. Coal magnate Edward Julius Berwind commissioned architect Horace Trumbauer to model much of the summer residence after the 18th-century Château d’Asnières outside Paris, completing the home in 1901 for a reported $1.4 million. The new interpretation shifts some attention from what the Berwinds owned to how people actually moved through and experienced the house.

Chief Curator Leslie B. Jones said the research revealed more about “the building, objects, family, designers and staff,” giving the Preservation Society a fuller picture of the lives behind the mansion’s formal rooms.

Visitors can dig further into those stories through a mobile companion accessed by QR codes throughout the house, with additional historical context and source material available before, during, and after a visit. Preservation Society members get an early look during preview days November 12-14 before The Elms Experience opens to the public November 16. For tickets and visitor information, visit NewportMansions.org/the-elms.