The story
Beechwood stands on Bellevue Avenue in Newport, Rhode Island, an Italianate villa of the 1850s remade for William Backhouse Astor Jr. and his wife Caroline — the Mrs. Astor who ruled Gilded Age society and whose famous ballroom list defined 'the Four Hundred'; summers here were the social summit of the age. For decades in the late 20th century the mansion was opened for celebrated living-history tours, costumed guides playing the Astor household, and from that era comes its ghost lore: guides and visitors described a woman in period dress on the staircase and in the ballroom, footsteps and voices in the servants' passages, cold spots and glimpsed figures, told half in fun and half in earnest by people who spent their days in 1891. The estate was later purchased privately — reported plans for an art museum notwithstanding — and public access ended, so the record must state that Beechwood is not currently visitable and its status should be confirmed. Present the accounts as tour-era telling from a house whose real history needs no embroidery.