The commission was given to
McKim, Mead, and White in 1898, and the New York branch of
Jules Allard and Sons were engaged as interior decorators. Construction started in 1899, but the sharp winter slowed construction; Mrs. Oelrichs' sister had married
William K. Vanderbilt II that winter season, and the house was required for parties in the following Newport season; the eager Mrs. Oelrichs moved in July 1900, sending the workmen out in order to give a first party in August, a dinner for one hundred and twelve to outdo Mrs. Stuyvesant Fish's Harvest Festival Ball at
Crossways. Ferns and floral arrangements concealed the unfinished areas. The house was not completed until 1902. Rosecliff's brick construction is clad in white architectural terracotta tiles. Stanford White's sophisticated spatial planning offered unexpected views
en filade through aligned doorways centered on handsome monumental fireplaces with projecting overmantels. The central
corps de logis is entirely taken up with the ballroom as it appeared on White's plans which, with the Louis XIV furniture removed, could serve as Newport's largest ballroom at . Its scheme of single and paired
Corinthian pilasters alternating with arch-headed windows and recessed doorways echoes the articulation of the exterior. This is reached through the French doors on either side, to a plain terrace dropping by broad stairs to the lawn facing the ocean, or to a planted terrace garden with a central fountain. In the northernmost of the wings that project from both sides of the central block, is a dining room and a billiard room separated by a marble anteroom backed, on the service side, by a butler's pantry with two dumbwaiters. These communicate with the all-but-subterranean kitchens below which were lit, invisibly, from the sunken service yard on the north side of the house. The main entrance, on the opposite south wing, is through a vestibule where the exterior Ionic order is carried inside, now suitably enriched, under an emphatic cornice that divides the height 2:3. The vestibule is separated, by a tripartite screen with an arched central opening flanked above the cornice by bull's-eye openings in which
baroque vases stand, from a grand Stair Hall. The Stair Hall projects from the south block to accommodate a grand staircase that sweeps forward through a heart-shaped opening into the floor space. This divides at a landing to return in matched recurving flights to the upper floor. Beyond the Stair Hall is the Salon with the same proportions as the Dining Room (3:4, or 30 by 40 feet) and like it, originally hung with
tapestry. Its ceiling is
coffered. Its overscaled Gothic fireplace of
Caen stone is the one eclectic anomaly in Rosecliff's interiors. Upstairs, three grand bedrooms of equal importance and guest bedrooms of graduated sizes may be linked by opened doors or isolated by locked ones, in a flexible arrangement of rooms or suites, all with baths, and all separated from the wide corridor by intervening dressing closets for hermetic privacy from the staff, who moved up and down stairs by means of two small service stairs contrived in spaces smaller than the master bedrooms' walk-in closets. The most famous of Mrs. Oelrich's parties was the "Bal blanc" of 19 August 1904 to celebrate the
Astor Cup Races, in which everything was white and silver. Mrs. Oelrich died at Newport on November 22, 1926. The funeral took place in the "beautiful blue and gold tapestry room" at Rosecliff.
Monroe family Hermann Oelrichs, Jr. kept Rosecliff in the family until 1941, then the estate went through several changes of ownership before being bought by Mr & Mrs J. Edgar Monroe of New Orleans in 1947. Mr. Monroe, a southern gentleman who had made his fortune in the ship building industry, came to Newport with his wife Louise every summer to escape the summer heat of the Deep South. The two became well known for the large parties they threw at Rosecliff; many of which had a mardi gras theme, as the Monroes loved dressing up in fancy costumes for these parties. Unlike Mrs. Oelrichs' parties, which were stiff and formal, the Monroes' parties were relaxed and easygoing. Hermann Oelrichs Jr. sold off all the furnishings in 1941. In 1971, Mr. and Mrs. Monroe donated the entire estate with its contents and a $2 million operating endowment to the
Preservation Society of Newport County, ==In television and film==