Wilderstien, is a Hudson Valley house museum that was occupied by three generations of the Suckley family, in Rhinebeck, NY. Thomas Suckley was a descendant of two prominent New York families: the Beekmans and Livingstons.

I have to start off by saying I did not expect what I saw at Winterthur. I had initially thought it would be a nice gilded age house museum, where you tour and admire different rooms filled with paintings and antiques. Instead, what I experienced in the former home of Henry Francis du Pont, was an extensive collection of American decorative arts in 175 rooms with over 90,000 individual objects on an estate with 1,000 natural garden acres of rolling hills, streams, meadows and forests.

Just off bustling King Street, is Carlyle House, built by merchant John Carlyle between 1751 and 1753 in the Georgian-style. The house is architecturally unique as the only stone 18th century residence in Alexandria.

Norwalk native LeGrand Lockwood, New York financier, railroad magnate, and Treasurer of the New York Stock Exchange purchased 35 acres in Norwalk, Connecticut to build his country estate. French-trained architect Detlef Lienau was commissioned to design a technologically advanced 62-room mansion with indoor plumbing, running hot and cold water, burglar alarm system and heat and ventilation controls.

Sara Spencer Morgan, sister of J.P. Morgan and husband George Hill Morgan commissioned Rotch & Tilden to build Ventfort Hall, and it was built between 1891 and 1893. They were 7th cousins so they both carried the Morgan name. The Morgan family summered together at their Lenox home until Sarah died in 1896, and then her husband in 1911. Ventfort Hall was left to their three children, Junius Spencer, George Dennison and Caroline Lucy, who sold the house and all the contents, so there are no original furnishings in the house today.

Reynolda was built between 1912 and 1917 by Kathharine Smith Reynolds and her husband R.J. Reynolds, founder of the R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company, on 1,067 acres.

Glenview is a mansion built in 1877 by successful stockbroker, John Bond Trevor. In 1876, Trevor purchased 23 acres and commissioned architect Charles W. Clinton to design his home in the New York City suburbs. Nothing was spared both inside and out, when building the house.

Nemours, the former 300-acre estate of Alfred I. du Pont, is named after the du Pont ancestral home in north central France. The 102-room French chateau-style mansion, designed by Carrere and Hastings, and built between 1909 and 1910, was a gift from Alfred to his second wife, Alicia.

Sefton Manor, now called Mill Neck Manor, is a Tudor-Revival mansion that sits on 86 acres on the north shore of Long Island overlooking the Sound in Mill Neck.

William K. Vanderbilt chose architect Richard Morris Hunt to design the 39th birthday present he wanted to give to his wife, Alva. It would be call Marble House and was to be built on Newport’s fashionable Bellevue Avenue. Richard Morris Hunt was the first American educated at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris.

Rosecliff was commissioned by Nevada silver heiress Theresa “Tessie” Fair Oelrichs and her husband, Hermann, and was built between 1898 and 1902. Flamboyant architect, Sanford White of McKim, Mead & White, designed the house modeled after the Grand Trianon, the garden retreat at Versailles. The mansion is clad in white terracotta adorned with flowers and musical instruments. Jules Allard and Sons of Paris were commissioned to do the interior decoration.

Belcourt was a bachelor pad built for horse enthusiast Oliver Hazard Perry Belmont, with French and Gothic influences, designed by renowned Beaux Arts architect Richard Morris Hunt. The 44,000 square foot house was built with one bedroom and one bathroom and extensive stables and carriage area incorporated into the house’s ground level design.

The Breakers is the grandest of Newport’s summer “cottages” and a symbol of the Vanderbilt family’s social and financial pre-eminence in turn-of-the-century America. The mansion was built for Cornelius Vanderbilt II and his wife Alice, on 13 acres, and is named after the waves that crash at the base of the cliffs. The Italian Renaissance-style mansion replaced a smaller home on the site that was completely destroyed by fire in 1892. Architect Richard Morris Hunt was commissioned to design the house modeled after the 16th century palaces and villas of Genoa. The lavish interiors in the 70-room mansion were the work of Jules Allard & Sons of Paris and Ogden Codman, Jr.

The Elms was the summer residence of Mr. and Mrs. Edward Julius Berwind. In 1898, the Berwin’s engaged Philadelphia architect Horace Trumbauer to design a house modeled after an 18th century French chateau. The mansion was completed in 1901, with interior furnishings designed by Jules Allard and Sons of Paris. Mrs. Berwind died in 1922, and Mr. Berwind invited his sister, Julia, to become his hostess at his Newport house. Mr. Berwind died in 1936 and Julia continued to summer at the house until her death in 1961.

Glenview is a mansion built in 1877 by successful stockbroker, John Bond Trevor. In 1876, Trevor purchased 23 acres and commissioned architect Charles W. Clinton to design his home in the New York City suburbs. Nothing was spared both inside and out, when building the house.

Built between 1908 and 1912, Fonthill Castle was the home of archaeologist, anthropologist, ceramicist, scholar and antiquarian Henry Chapman Mercer. This was his Doylestown, Pennsylvania home and served as a showplace for his famed Moravian tiles that were produced during the Arts & Crafts Movement. The castle was designed by Mercer with an eclectic mix of medieval and gothic architecture styles and an early example of poured reinforced concrete.

Daniel Chester French was one of the most successful artists of the late 19th and the early 20th centuries, producing more than 100 public sculptures. He is best known for his Minute Man in Concord, Massachusetts and the Abraham Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C.

In 1895, Frederick W. Vanderbilt purchased the Langdon estate, comprised of 153 acres, a structurally unsound house, a farm and 459 acres on the east side of Post Road. Hyde Park was the name of the stately home he commissioned for himself and his wife, Louise and it was built between 1896 and 1899 on approximately 600 acres. The mansion on a bluff overlooking the Hudson River in Hyde Park, N.Y., this was one of several homes owned by the couple.

Coe Hall is the 65-room centerpiece of the 409-acre Planting Fields Historic State Park located in Oyster Bay, New York. The estate was originally landscaped by Frederick Law Olmsted, featuring greenhouses, rolling lawns, formal gardens, woodland paths and outstanding plant collections.

Westbook Farms started when William Bayard Cutting purchased the George C. Lorillard estate on the Connetiquot River in the Long Island town of Great River. Cutting was a New York City lawyer and sugar beet refiner, who made his fortune in railroads and in the development of the Red Hook, Brooklyn waterfront.