The Boston Globe
Known as “Champ Soleil,” the private Bellevue Avenue estate was built in 1929 for the Drexel family.
NEWPORT, R.I. – One of the few historic, but still privately-owned, Newport mansions has hit the market for $22 million.
Known as “Champ Soleil,” the 5-plus acre estate at 601 Bellevue Ave. was built in 1929 for the Drexels, the storied family of banker patriarch, Anthony J. Drexel, whose firm, Drexel Morgan & Associates, with protégé, John Pierpont Morgan, would eventually become J.P. Morgan Chase.
Taking inspiration from “La Lanterne” at Versailles, the mansion, listed on Wednesday, sits “right down in the heart of the best district of Bellevue Avenue,” said Paul Leys, co-owner of Gustave White Sotheby’s International Realty, who has the listing with fellow co-owner David Huberman.
The estate sits across from Marble House — the 19th century summer retreat for the Vanderbilts — and just down the street from other famed mansions, including Miramar and Rough Point.
“It’s spectacular,” Leys said on Thursday. “It truly is, you know, one of the few remaining private Newport mansions.”
According to Sotheby’s, the 15,000-square-foot villa was designed by renowned architectural firm, Polhemus & Coffin.
The property’s main residence features seven bedrooms, eight bathrooms, a paneled library, a home theater, “and fully modernized high-end systems,” while the grounds include manicured gardens designed by landscape architect Umberto Innocenti, a croquet lawn, a 20-by-40-foot pool, terraces, a greenhouse, and an “FAA approved heliport,” — an amenity Leys said is “very, very rare,” even in affluent Newport.
“The estate includes a separate two-unit carriage house with four-car garage and workshop, while vacant land offers the potential for subdivision,” according to a statement from Sotheby’s.
City tax records show the 18-room estate last sold for approximately $4.7 million in September 2003 and it had an assessed value of nearly $9 million for fiscal year 2025.
According to Sotheby’s, other owners over the past century have included “the Ogden family of NY’s Manhattan Bank who added a ballroom and servants’ quarters” and “The Metropolitan’s power couple, Russell and Annie Laurie Aitken.”
“Meticulously restored and modernized, ‘Champ Soleil’ is a landmark estate preserving the splendor of Newport’s legendary Gilded Age, a rare opportunity in one of America’s premier coastal enclaves,” Sotheby’s said.
