Buildings of New England

“Boxcroft” (also known as “Whileaway”) is a historic Shingle style summer “cottage” on Red Cross Avenue in Newport, Rhode Island. While it is surrounded by vegetation and tucked away, not facing the road, the house is a landmark example of the architecture style and very significant. The house was completed in 1883 from plans by the architectural firm of McKim, Mead & White a white shoe firm who designed many summer cottages in Newport for social elite. The original owner was Samuel Colman (1832-1920), a well-known landscape artist, the first President of the American Water Color Society, a connoisseur of Oriental art and an interior designer in business with Louis Comfort Tiffany specializing in fabrics and wallpaper. Colman lived here with his first wife, Ann Lawrence Dunham until her death in 1902. The property was later owned by Mary Appleton, an unmarried daughter of publisher William Henry Appleton. She would sell Boxcroft to lawyer and socialite J. Coleman Drayton, years following his bitter (and very public) divorce from Charlotte Augusta Astor, a member of the prominent New York Astor family, following a cheating scandal by Charlotte. Mr. Drayton died in Newport in 1934. Boxcroft remains an architecturally and historically significant piece of Newport’s Gilded Age.