Linden Place

The DeWolf family of Bristol financed and outfitted more slaving voyages than any other family in the nation's history, carrying thousands of enslaved Africans across the Atlantic in the decades around 1800. That commerce, and the Cuban sugar plantations the family also owned, produced the money that built and furnished Linden Place.

The house does not treat this as a footnote. Its interpretation confronts the source of the wealth directly, part of a broader reckoning in Bristol and across Rhode Island with the state's deep entanglement in slavery and the slave trade. Understanding that history is the point of the visit as much as admiring the architecture.

Linden Place was designed by Russell Warren, one of the region's most important early architects, in the Federal style then at its height. The facade's tall columns, delicate detailing, and balanced proportions made it a showpiece meant to announce the family's status.

Inside, period rooms preserve the furnishings, portraits, and decorative arts of a wealthy nineteenth-century household, and the grounds include gardens and a striking summerhouse. The whole ensemble is a rare survival of high Federal design in a single, intact estate.

The mansion's later life brought it into the world of American celebrity. Ethel Barrymore, the great stage and screen actress and a member of the legendary acting family, married Russell Griswold Colt of the family that then owned the house, tying Linden Place to Hollywood's first dynasty.

The estate's photogenic grounds and architecture have drawn filmmakers as well, most famously as a location for a screen version of The Great Gatsby, whose Jazz Age glamour suited the setting. Those connections give the house a second layer of story beyond its founding.

The Colt family occupied Linden Place into the twentieth century, and when it might have been lost, community efforts preserved it and opened it to the public. It now runs as a nonprofit house museum and event venue at the center of Bristol life.

Bristol itself wears its history openly, from the Herreshoff boatworks that made it famous for yachts to the nation's oldest continuous Fourth of July celebration. Linden Place adds the essential, uncomfortable chapter, the fortune beneath the finery, that a full understanding of the town requires.

The closest Boutel™ stays, so you can turn this stop into an overnight. Each is an independently owned, editorially selected place to stay.