Known as the oratory, a private chapel sits within the estate, kitted out for 150 congregants. It is said to be haunted by Edson’s wife, Julia Williams Bradley, who died just a few years after they moved to the house in 1929. Her funeral was held here and – according to local legend – her ghost was seen playing the chapel's organ following the service.

In 1923, Bradley began disassembling his Dupont Circle mansion and moving it piece by piece to a Newport property at Ruggles and Wetmore avenues.

The site already contained an Elizabethan Revival mansion dating back to 1885, which was incorporated into the design, and lent its name to the new mansion, Seaview Terrace.

Transported with the help of multiple railroad cars and trucks, the stately home was one of the largest buildings to be moved in this manner, a process that took two years to complete.

Remarkably, rooms that had been originally imported intact from France and installed in the home in Washington, DC were reassembled in Newport 20 years later.

An expensive project

Finally completed in 1925 and costing over $2 million – or $36 million (£27m) in today's money – it's the largest of the Gilded Age ‘Summer Cottages’ still under private ownership.

What's more, it's also the fifth-largest Newport mansion after The Breakers, Ochre Court, Belcourt Castle and Rough Point.

Multiple architectural styles

While the high-pitched roofline of this expansive French Renaissance château drew on some of the architectural features of the famed Château de Chambord, its design is more English in style, with a plethora of gables and rows of chimneys.

The roof is divided into three separate connecting attics. The spaces even host spy holes, rumoured to exist so that eagle-eyed servants could catch naughty guests or thieves in the act.

The conical tower was also moved from the Washington, DC site and rebuilt in Newport. But what happened to the original lot in Dupont Circle?

Seaview Terrace: tour the $29m Rhode Island mansion moved 400 miles