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.

The town of Saugerties is popular now because they have the right mix of high-quality shops and restaurants, cool art and architecture and the outdoors with hiking trails. There is something for everyone in this town nestled between the Catskill Mountains and the Hudson River. Saugerties, like many Hudson Valley towns, lost many manufacturing jobs, but have been on the upswing with popularity.

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.

On the Long Island Sound, in the town of Lattingtown, John Edward Aldred, along with W.D. Guthrie decided to establish themselves on Long Island’s Gold Coast. In 1910 they bought out the incorporated village of Lattingtown, leveled some 60 houses and businesses and built two mansions on the waterfront.

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.

The village of Catskill, a historic river town located along the banks of the mighty Hudson, was incorporated in 1806. New Yorkers would head to the Borscht Belt to sunbathe, swim, dance, and dine during the summer months and the area soon became known as the Jewish vacationland.

Hudson, named for the famous English explorer Henry Hudson, has seen it all. It started as a busy river port town, then a center of inspiration for landscape painters leading to the Hudson River School.

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.

Immediately upon entering the walled garden, you will be transported from Yonkers to lands far away. This is only the beginning of the journey through the Untermeyer Park and Garden off of North Broadway in Yonkers.

Newport is a beautiful city and worth a visit no matter what time of the year. Located on the southern end of Aquidneck Island, it has a historic district that includes an extensive and well-preserved variety of intact colonial buildings dating back to the early and mid-18th century. Some of these homes still stand the way they were 250 years ago, but many were restored in the late 20th century through grants made by Newport resident Doris Duke and the Newport Restoration Foundation.

In 1926, John Hays Hammond, Jr., retained the architectural firm of Allen & Colleens to create his castle which was completed in 1929 on a cliff overlooking the Atlantic Ocean. Hammond was a scientist, inventor and a pioneer in the study of remote control and held the largest number of patents, only second to Thomas Edison.

Thomas Rogers first settled the area in 1657 and dubbed it “The Garden by the Sea”. The town takes its name from Rogers’ family abandoned apple orchards. Old Orchard Beach first was promoted as a tourist designation in 1631. A steady flow of tourists started coming to Old Orchard Beach when railroad service from Portland and Boston was established in 1842.

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.

Wethersfield, Connecticut was settled in 1634 and more than 150 homes predate the Civil War and some predate the Revolutionary War. A walk through the historic district of Old Wethersfield seems like it is in a world of its own, yet it is just minutes from busy I-91.

In “The Great Gatsby”, F. Scott Fitzgerald described this area as “a valley of ashes”. It would later be transformed into the 1,200-acre site where the world would converge in 1939, to witness highlights that included exhibitions by companies like General Electric, IBM, RCA, Borden, American Tobacco and Coca Cola.