“Dark Shadows” and Seaview Terrace Mansion
When Vampires Roamed
In 1907, whiskey millionaire Edson Bradley built a French-Gothic mansion on the south side of Dupont Circle in Washington, D.C. It covered more than half a city block, and included a Gothic chapel with seating for 150, a large ballroom, an art gallery, and a 500-seat theatre — 90 feet by 120 feet, and several stories tall, completed in 1911 — known as Aladdin’s Palace.
In 1923, Bradley began disassembling his Washington, D.C. mansion and relocating it to a Newport property at Ruggles and Wetmore avenues. Seaview, the 1885 Elizabethan-Revival mansion already on the site, was incorporated into the design, and lent its name to the new chateau. Work on the exterior continued for two years, and required the use of many railroad cars and trucks. Rooms that had been imported intact from France and installed in Washington, D.C. 20 years earlier were moved again and reassembled in Newport, and the new building was constructed around them.
When the interiors were completed in 1925, there were 17 rooms on the first floor, 25 on the second, and 12 on the third. It is believed to have been one of the largest buildings to be moved in this manner.
Seaview Terrace cost over $2,000,000 to build. The main house featured turrets, stained-glass windows, high arching doorways and…