Marble House includes Marble House and many other historic Newport mansions, was added to the Register on December 8, 1972 and subsequently designated as a National Historic Landmark District on May 11, 1976. Marble House is one of the earliest examples of Beaux-Arts architecture in the United States, with design inspiration from the Petit Trianon at the Palace of Versailles. Jules Allard and Sons of Paris, first hired by the Vanderbilts to design some of the interiors for their Petit Chateau on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan, designed the French-inspired interiors of Marble House. The grounds were designed by landscape architect Ernest W.
Palace of Versailles to the royal apartments. Louis XVI gave Marie Antoinette the Petit Trianon in 1774. The Queen made extensive changes to the interior, and added a theater, the Théâtre de la Reine. She also totally transformed the arboretum planted during the reign of Louis XV into what became known as the Hameau de la Reine. This was a picturesque collection of buildings modeled after a rural French hamlet, where the Queen and her courtiers could play at being peasants. The Queen was at the Petit Trianon in 1789 when she first learned of the beginning of the French Revolution in July