Naumkeag is the former Berkshire estate of New York City lawyer and U.S. Ambassador to Great Britain, Joseph Hodges Choate, and his wife Caroline, located in Stockbridge, Massachusettes. The Choate’s, who were part of the newly-rich, traveled in well-to-do social circles. They decided to build a 44-room shingle-style “cottage” with brick and stone details, designed by the architect of the day, Stanford White.

Robert Lincoln, the only child of Abraham and Mary Todd Lincoln, retained the architecture firm of Shepley, Rutan and Coolidge to built his summer home on 392 acres in Manchester, Vermont. Lincoln had served as Secretary of War and Minister to the Court of St. James, and made his fortune as a lawyer before becoming President of the Pullman Company. Robert Lincoln and his wife, Mary Harlan Lincoln, lived at Hildene in high style.

Olana was the eclectic home of Frederic Edwin Church and his wife Isabel. Frederic was one of the major figures in the Hudson River School of landscape painting. The mansion was designed by Mr. Church in conjunction with architect Calvert Vaux and built between 1870 and 1872. A studio wing was added in 1889.

Blithewold is a 33-acre seaside garden estate that once the Bristol, Rhode Island summer home of Augustus and Bessie Van Wickle.

The Green Animals Topiary Garden property, overlooking Narragansett Bay in Portsmouth, Rhode Island was purchased in 1872 by Thomas Brayton, Treasurer of the Union Cotton Manufacturing Company in Fall River, Massachusetts.

Crane created this lavish summer retreat for his wife, Florence Higinbotham Crane and three children, Cornelius and Florence. The Crane Estate would come to exemplify the American Country Place Era, which emphasized the integration of indoor and outdoor spaces.

The beautiful former estate of the world-respected innovator, George Eastman, houses two museums, the inventor’s 50-room fireproof home

iMajor and Mrs. James H. Dooley transformed rough fields and pastures into a showplace many American millionaires were creating during the Gilded Age.

Ann set up a foundation for the perpetual maintenance of this home on 2.5 acres which became this permanent green oasis of art, wildlife, subtropical trees and plants.

The Morikami Museum and Japanese Gardens is a center for Japanese arts and culture in Delray Beach, Florida.

This five-part Georgian mansion was built in the 1760s and then carefully restored by Historic Annapolis beginning in 1965.

Marjorie Merriweather Post was a pioneering business executive, engaged citizen, generous philanthropist, distinguished collector and amazing party hostess.

The mansion that houses the Nassau Country Museum of Art, in Roslyn Harbor, was originally built by Lloyd Stephens Bryce utilizing the Neo-Georgian designs of architect Ogden Codman.

Savannah is the oldest city in the state of Georgia, established in 1733. The downtown Historic District, considered one of the largest in the U.S., largely retains the original twenty-two parklike square plans laid out by James Oglethorpe.

James Deering, socialite and antiquities collector built an elaborate Florida villa and estate named Vizcaya on Biscayne Bay in Miami.

Old Westbury Gardens is the former estate of John Shaffer Phipps who had the 44-room English manor house house commissioned as a wedding present to his wife, Margarita Grace Phipps. It was completed in 1906 by the English designer George A. Crawley on 200 acres of formal gardens, landscaped grounds, woodlands, ponds and lakes.

Biltmore, the opulent 250-room French Renaissance chateau, nestled in North Carolina’s Blue Ridge Mountains, was the vision of George Washington Vanderbilt, carried out by renowned architect Richard Morris Hunt. Construction began in 1889 and the opulent estate, with grounds designed by Frederick Law Olmsted, was opened on Christmas Eve in 1895 to family and friends.

Built between 1863 and 1868, Kylemore Castle, was a 70-room private home for Mitchell Henry and his family. Mitchell was the son of a wealthy Manchester cotton merchant, and he was skilled pathologist and eye surgeon, who ended up getting involved with politics.

The current 528-room Breakers was rebuilt in 1926 by Flagler heirs, since Henry had passed in in 1913. The architectural firm of Schultze and Weaver modeled it after the Villa Medici in Rome.

The castle dates back to the early 12th century, but most of the principal buildings date somewhere from the 15th and 16th centuries.