THE BILLIONAIRE WHO NEARLY BROKE NEWPORT

TRUMP MEGADONOR STEPHEN SCHWARZMAN'S EXTREME MANSION MAKEOVER IS DRIVING HIS NEIGHBORS NUTS.

- HANNAH LEVINTOVA

THE FIRST THING the neighbors on Newport’s Bellevue Avenue complained about was the helipad. The 2-mile stretch of Rhode Island coast has long been a playground for America’s billionaires, lined with lavish, historic mansions. But for as long as most could remember, old money had meant an untouchable kind of peace, not the thunderous noise of a chopper. Now the New Yorkers who’d bought 646 Bellevue—a Gilded Age estate known as Miramar—had turned a patch of grass on their 8 acres of oceanfront land into their very own LaGuardia, and folks weren’t happy about it.

“Having Sikorskys land in the neighborhood does seem contextually off, noisy, and potentially unsafe,” one neighbor emailed to another. They didn’t even ask Newport’s zoning board, she’d heard. Her concern, she emphasized, was “the character, livability, and safety of the neighborhood.” This wasn’t about begrudging the mansion’s new owners, Wall Street titan Stephen Schwarzman and his wife, Christine, who, by all accounts, were “very nice people.”

Schwarzman, the 77-year-old ceo of private equity giant Blackstone, had purchased Miramar the year before, in the fall of 2021. The mansion boasts 44,000 square feet of living space, including 22 bedrooms, 13 full bathrooms, and a seven-bed, seven-bath guesthouse. It was completed in 1915 for a streetcar magnate who died on the Titanic. Within months of buying Miramar, Schwarzman also acquired the residence next door, Ocean View, which has 15 bedrooms, 12 bathrooms, and a six-car garage. Together, they cost $43 million—making Schwarzman’s megaproperty among Newport’s most expensive home purchases ever.