Ringwood Manor became the Gilded Age summer estate of partners Peter Cooper and Abram Hewitt and their families in 1853.

The colonial revival style Sagtikos Manor was built by Stephanus Van Cortlands, the first American born Mayor of New York City, in 1697. The house, originally on 1,200 acres, was expanded in 1772 and then again in 1902.

The white Federal-style mansion on Main Street was a symbol of wealth for William Nickels. It then became a hotel for 40+ years, before being acquired by Alvin Sortwell who restored it as summer house for his family.

Hamilton House was built by merchant Jonathan Hamilton, from Portsmouth, New Hampshire, in 1788. The Georgian-style house stands above the Salmon Falls River, and is surrounded by formal gardens and a 200-acre wildlife sanctuary.

Merchant James Rundlet and his wife Jane built their home in 1807. The home was an urban showplace, filled with all the finest home furnishings and latest innovations of the day.

The Lee-Fendall House Museum & Garden was constructed 1785 and is located in Old Town Alexandria. The house and its collections present a timeline of nineteenth and early twentieth century history and family life.

The stately Eustis mansion is a historic family home designed by Milton architect William Ralph Emerson and built in 1878 for William Ellery Channing Eustis and his family.

The story of Kykuit began with philanthropist John D. Rockefeller, founder of Standard Oil and the estate he built that was home to four generations of the Rockefeller family. The 40-room Georgian-style historic home in Pocantico Hills was built in 1913.

Ruth Livingston Mills and Ogden Mills owned homes in Paris, Newport, Manhattan and California, but it is this 65-room Beaux-Arts Gilded Age mansion that five generations of Livingstons lived and entertained. The 40,000 square foot mansion was originally a smaller house, built in 1832 and greatly altered and expanded to what it is today.

Mount Vernon is an American landmark and once a vibrant 18th century plantation and home to the first President of the United States. The estate is located on the banks on the Potomac River.

The Lyndhurst mansion was designed by Alexander Jackson Davis in the Gothic Revival-style. The 67-acre estate landscape design was the work of Ferdinand Mangold. The Tarrytown estate had three resident families: the Pauldings, the Merritts and the Goulds.

The Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum was the first library solely dedicated to a President of the United States, and is located on the grounds of the family estate, Springwood. Located a short distance from Springwood was Val-Kil. Eleanor Roosevelt considered Val-Kil to be her first real home.

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.