William Seward and Eliza (Lila) Osgood Vanderbilt Webb were married in 1881 and acquired some 32 area farms from 1886 until 1902 to create their 3,800 agricultural estate, Shelburne Farm on Lake Champlain.

Villa Melzi was built as the summer home of the vice-president of the Napoleonic Italian Republic, Duke Francesco Melzi D’Eril. The neoclassical mansion, set in beautiful grounds with classical statues, century-old trees and exotic vegetation, was built between 1808 and 1813.

Beaufort is located on Port Royal Island, and posses an old-world, southern charm.

Bluffton is often described as ‘eclectic’, the town full of artists, art galleries and parades.

The museum was founded in 1976, and is located in a 1936 subway station in Downtown Brooklyn.

Lousine and her husband, famed college football player-turned stockbroker, Harold Weeks commissioned Grovsner Atterbury to design a French Chateau which was completed in 1918.

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.

I was told by the guide that this land was going to become a Walmart and public opposition won and this is Ferry Farm re-created. George Washington was 6 years old when the family moved here in 1738.

The Lightner Museum was founded by Chicago publisher and collector Otto C. Lightner in 1947. Lightner was best known as the publisher of Hobbies, The Magazine for Collectors.

Montpelier is the lifelong home of James Madison, the fourth President of the United States, father of the Constitution, architect of the Bill of Rights, Secretary of State, and slave owner.

George Washington purchased a three-room cottage for his mother, Mary Ball Washington in 1772. The house you see today was extensively expanded over the years.

The Ponce de Leon Hotel was an exclusive luxury hotel built by Standard Oil co-founder and railroad magnate Henry Flagler and competed in 1888. This was the first major project for the architecture firm of Carrere & Hastings.

Founded in 1565, St. Augustine is the oldest continuously occupied settlement of European American origin in the United States. The Downtown Historic District is where you will find the majority of the city’s activity.

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

The Telfair Museum is the legacy of one visionary, philanthropist Mary Telfair. This former mansion was built 1818-1819, for Alexander Telfair, son of Revolutionary War patriot and Georgia Governor Edward Telfair.

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

Long stretches of beach, farmland, towns and main streets with century old homes, and estates hidden behind hedges.

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.