Westbook Farms started when William Bayard Cutting purchased the George C. Lorillard estate on the Connetiquot River in the Long Island town of Great River. Cutting was a New York City lawyer and sugar beet refiner, who made his fortune in railroads and in the development of the Red Hook, Brooklyn waterfront.

Beauport, also known as the Sleeper-McCann House, was the shingle-style summer home of one of America’s first professional interior designers, Henry Davis Sleeper.

Stockholm’s City Hall is one of the city’s most iconic Swedish landmarks, designed by Ragnar Östberg and officially opened in 1923.

In 1836, prominent New York attorney, William Lewis Morris purchased 15 acres in the Riverdale section of the Bronx. He and his wife, Mary built Wave Hill which was completed in 1843.

The Gothic Revival skyscraper was commissioned in 1921 and inspired local industries to donate steel, cement, elevators, glass, plumbing, and heating elements.

The Royal Palace is a combination of royal residence, workplace and cultural-historical monument, and is one of the largest and most accessible royal palaces in Europe.

The Frick Collection is widely celebrated for its intimate, domestic setting within the original mansion, which creates a personal, almost home-like atmosphere for viewing the art.

Pittsburgh is known as the "Steel City" due to its industrial past, but today, it has reinvented itself with a strong presence in the tech, healthcare, and education sectors.

Pittsburgh’s steel industry, once the heartbeat of American industrial power, lives on in places like the Carrie Blast Furnaces—towering remnants of a bygone era. Standing 92’ tall, Furnaces #6 and #7 are rare examples of pre-WWII iron-making technology.

Alexander Hamilton’s summer home, Hamilton Grange, is located in the Hamilton Heights and Sugar Hill sections of Harlem. It has occupied three different sites within the neighborhood, all within the original bounds of Hamilton’s estate.

The museum is dedicated to preserving and sharing the story of America’s rich industrial heritage and celebrating the accomplishments of its workers, innovators, and entrepreneurs.

Created in 1915, the Oudayas Museum is one of the oldest public museums in Morocco, and contains one of the largest museum collections in the country.

The iconic SteelStacks are actually a series of five blast furnaces used in the iron-making process at Bethlehem Steel for decades.

Phipps Conservatory and Botanical Gardens, located in Schenley Park in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, was founded in 1893 as a gift from American entrepreneur Henry Phipps Jr.

Morocco was one of the first countries to recognize the new American republic shortly after the American Revolution. As a result, it is home to America’s oldest diplomatic property overseas and the only U.S. National Landmark abroad.

American architect Frank Lloyd Wright designed Fallingwater in 1935 as a vacation home for the Edgar J. Kaufmann family, owners of Pittsburgh’s largest department store.

New York City architect Harvey Wiley Corbett, who later became famous for designing much of Rockefeller Center, was enlisted to create plans for the memorial and the groundbreaking ceremony took place on June 5, 1922.

The 40-room, 80,000-square-foot mansion was completed in 1912 after six years of construction on 135 acres close to Lloyd Harbor.

Founded in 1960, the museum opens many of these buildings to the public at various times throughout the year, offering events and opportunities to explore the rich history of the area.

In this blog post I highlight five of the Vanderbilt family homes that I have covered in the past. As I’m sure you know, members of the Vanderbilt family were master builders of massive homes - some were only used a few weeks or months of the year.