I had not paid any attention to Stephen 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 refurbished 8-acre clifftop estate on Bellevue Avenue. As Bill suggested, the house is a bit of a head-scratcher for a couple who already have residences in Nantucket, East Hampton, Saint-Tropez, Jamaica, and an estate in the English countryside, not to mention a primary home on Park Avenue. Were they really giving up on the big billionaire summer redoubts in favor of sleepy, old-ish money Newport, as an article in Air Mail had originally suggested? 

Probably not, so why the concerted publicity push? After reading Bill’s item on the christening of Miramar—which is just a little more than a mile walk away from the most famous house in Newport, the Vanderbilts’ old Breakers—I noticed some other suggestive stories about the party, the house (which the Schwarzmans bought for $27 million in 2021), and their decision to convert the house into a museum that will be open to the public after their deaths. A couple of the reports included quotes from Ian Wardropper, the outgoing director of the Frick Museum in New York, where Schwarzman is a trustee. “They are really taking this seriously,” Wardropper was quoted as saying in two different outlets, “and trying to get the very best objects they can find to make this house sing.”