The Dorothy Randolph Fell House, c. 1913 — in the Ocean Road Historic District, on 2.84 parklike acres, rebuilt to its original design across seven years.
Properties like this are rarely offered — and almost never this private. This one comes with the record to match.
Between 2014 and 2020 the property was taken down to its systems and rebuilt — plumbing, electrical, septic, heat, structure — then extended with a full carriage-house conversion and a private saltwater pool. The work was designed by Couture Design Associates, Inc. and built by Blackmore Customs, LLC, and it is documented to the invoice.
Set on a rare 2.84-acre parklike parcel at the southern end of the Ocean Road Historic District, this distinguished residence offers nearly 9,000 square feet of refined multi-generational coastal living. Six en-suite bedrooms, three half baths and seven fireplaces — two of them set into the exterior fieldstone chimneys that anchor the elevation — blend original character with extensive modern updates throughout.
The property was meticulously restored to its original design by Couture Design Associates, Inc., the architecture and interior design firm of JP Couture, with Blackmore Customs, LLC as general contractor. The programme included updated plumbing and electrical systems, a fully replaced advanced-treatment septic system, repaved driveway, updated HVAC, new water heaters, structural restoration, new exterior shingles, custom millwork, whole house generator, and additional living and entertaining spaces.
The wastewater system is not a conventional field. The property is served by advanced nitrogen-reducing treatment, state-permitted and conformed, rated to seven bedrooms — documentation on request.
Outdoor living is equally impressive, with expansive landscaped grounds and a private 18′ × 40′ saltwater pool with a pebble sheen finish and automatic retractable cover. A detached garage with second-floor full bar and media room, complemented by an outdoor shower, pergola, and beautifully maintained gardens, provides the perfect setting for entertainment and relaxation.
With its estate-scale acreage, historic pedigree and extensively documented renovations, 460 Ocean Road presents a truly unique opportunity in Narragansett’s coastal market.
A pre-inspection is available upon request. The seller has commissioned it in advance so that qualified buyers can review condition before writing, rather than after.
The National Register nomination for the Ocean Road Historic District inventories the house as the Dorothy Randolph Fells House — “a rambling, 1½- to 2-story Dutch Colonial Style structure with a flank gable roof punctuated by two front gambrels,” with “two prominently placed, exterior fieldstone chimneys” rising against them. The nomination records that Dorothy purchased the property in 1913 from Philip S. P. Randolph — her father. It was, in effect, a settlement of ground upon a daughter, laid out at the edge of the family’s own.
Philip Syng Physick Randolph kept Wildfield Farm, at the road’s southern end. He sat on the founding board of the country club organised in 1894; the Narragansett chronicle has him leading “the Philadelphia contingent at the Pier” in 1895, giving dinners for visiting polo players at Wildfield in 1896, and receiving General John J. Pershing there as his guest in 1922. The house at 460 stands at that end of the district, where Ocean Road runs out toward Wildfield Farm Road.
Dorothy’s first marriage, to the banker John Ruckman Fell, ended in 1923. In September 1924 she married Ogden Livingston Mills, then a Republican congressman from New York and a grandson of Darius Ogden Mills, who had gone out to California in 1848 and turned the gold rush into a banking fortune. Mills served as Under Secretary of the Treasury under Andrew Mellon and then, from February 1932 to March 1933, as Herbert Hoover’s Secretary of the Treasury through the worst of the Depression — campaigning for the President against Franklin Roosevelt, his college friend and lifelong Hudson River neighbour. Mrs. Mills sold the Narragansett house in 1929, months before the crash.
The Pier came up in the 1880s as a rival to Newport, its centre the Casino built to designs by McKim, Mead & White between 1883 and 1886, with grounds laid out by Frederick Law Olmsted. Fire took it on 12 September 1900 — it began in the Rockingham Hotel across the way — and left only the granite Towers spanning Ocean Road, which stand today. Along the road itself McKim, Mead & White and William Gibbons Preston of Boston raised the shingled, stone-footed summer houses that give the district its character: Gillian Lodge, Stone Croft, Rockhurst, Finisterre, Fair Lawn.
460 Ocean Road belongs to the end of that building campaign. Where the houses of the 1880s reach for the picturesque, the Dutch Colonial Revival of about 1913 is lower, broader and more domestic — a long flank-gabled mass, gambrels brought forward to the elevation, rough fieldstone carried up the outside walls in chimneys that hold the composition to its ground. No architect is recorded for the house in the nomination. Its contemporary carriage house is separately inventoried, two doors north.
Sources: National Register of Historic Places nomination for the Ocean Road Historic District (ref. 82000019, listed 18 August 1982) and the Narragansett Historical Society chronology. The nomination spells the first owner’s name Fells; contemporary records give her married name as Fell.
Advanced-treatment septic replaced under RIDEM permit 1420-1538, conformed January 2016. Full line-item schedule — 60+ categories with estimated value, actual value and amount invoiced — available to qualified buyers on request.
Carried as a separate contract from the main residence by Blackmore Customs. Captured within the residence and systems figure above.
Carried in a dedicated general-ledger account and invoiced separately by Blackmore Customs between June 2017 and September 2018.
$4,274,164 reconciled to the owner’s general ledger — $4,120,588 in improvements 5/2014–6/2020, $7,400 in 7/2020–12/2021, and $146,176 in the dedicated pool account — with a further $42,249 capitalised in 2022. Excludes the 2014 acquisition and all closing costs. Supporting ledger and invoices available to qualified buyers on request.
Aerial film by ChopyMedia, August 2026. Interior photography and a 3D walkthrough are in production. Request a private showing to see the house before it is publicly marketed.
Additional photography, a video tour and a 3D walkthrough are in production. Request a private showing to see the house in person before it is publicly marketed.
A pre-inspection is available upon request, along with the boundary survey, the RIDEM septic permit and conformance, the general contractor’s line-item schedule, and the seller disclosures.
Ocean Road’s remaining estate parcels are overwhelmingly under an acre. Multi-acre land in this district is not being created, and R-80 zoning protects the setting on every side.
Nitrogen-reducing pretreatment over a bottomless sand filter, rated 805 gallons per day and state-conformed in 2016 — not a conventional field of unknown age. The permit and conformance are in the document package.
Inventoried in the National Register nomination for the district, and settled on its first owner in 1913 by her father, the owner of Wildfield Farm. Original stonework, chimneys and floor plan intact after a decade of restoration rather than replacement.
Offered at $8,250,000. Showings by appointment. Full renovation documentation, the contractor’s line-item schedule, the RIDEM septic permit and a pre-inspection are available to qualified buyers and their representatives on request.