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

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.

Boscobel is a historic house museum located in Garrison, New York. It was built between 1804 and 1808 as the dream house of wealthy Loyalist, States Morris Dyckman in Montrose, New York.

In 1924, one of America’s wealthiest couples, started building a fifty-five room, 36,000 square-foot mansion called Ca’ d’Zan (meaning House of John) on Sarasota Bay in Florida.

Eagles Nest is the Spanish Revival 24-room mansion on an estate in Centerport, NY overlooking Northport Harbor. The house was commissioned by William K. Vanderbilt II and designed by Warren and Wetmore.

Monticello was the home of Declaration of Independence author, architect, Governor of Virginia, Ambassador to France, U.S. Vice President, two-term President and Founding Father Thomas Jefferson. Jefferson called Monticello his home from 1770 until his death in 1826.

Gabriel Manigault designed this house for his brother, to reflect his wealthy lifestyle. The Manigault family owned several plantations, and hundreds of slaves.

Clermont was the Hudson River seat of New York’s politically and socially prominent Livingston Family.

This brick, Georgian-style mansion reflects the pre-Revolutionary War wealth and status of Fredericksburg merchant, Fielding Lewis. Fielding was married to Betty Washington, George Washington’s sister.

Franklin W. Smith built his winter home, Villa Zorayda, in St. Augustine in 1883. He was inspired by the Alhambra Palace in Granada, Spain.

This house was built on Meeting Street in 1808 for wealthy merchant and slave trader Nathaniel Russell.

It is hard to believe that a man who was rescued and taken care of by slaves, managed to become a slave trader, buying and selling people like property. The Sorrel family lived here until 1859 when it was sold it to a Connecticut businessman named Henry Weed.

Opened to the public in 1954, the property allows visitors to explore the complicated relationships between the most and least powerful people in the city of Savannah in the early 19th century.

I have been to many house museums and all of them had some sort of restoration work involved. The preserved state of this home gives you a haunting feeling when you walk through what you could call preserved decay or a house frozen in time. It definitely gives a different perspective.

This Federal-style house was constructed at 21 East Battery for Scottish shipping merchant, Charles Edmondston in 1825. It was one of the first substantial houses to be built along the city’s sea wall away from the warehouses.

This home was built in 1772, as the town home of Founding Father Thomas Hayward, Jr., one of the South Carolina’s four signers of the Declaration of Independence.

The 216-acre property is home to four former Gilded Age homes of the Gould and Guggenheim families, now owned by Nassau County and operated by the Sands Point Conservancy.

Unlike most house museums, this restored French Quarter home centers its tour on the experience of the enslaved staff in an urban setting and how it differed from those living in a rural setting.

Whitehall is the Palm Beach mansion built by Henry Morrison Flagler, one of the founding members of Standard Oil and a leading developer of Florida as a tourist destination. The 75-room, 100,000 square feet home was enjoyed during winters by the Flaglers, and they entertained constantly for 11 years until his death in 1913.

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