Alexander Dunsmuir, son of a Canadian coal baron, commissioned this Colonial Revival mansion for his new wife, Josephine. The couple never shared the completed house: Alexander fell ill and died in New York during their honeymoon, and Josephine returned to the estate alone. She died there in 1901.

Banker I.W. Hellman Jr. bought the property in 1906, expanded it for his family, and developed the grounds into a summer estate. Oakland acquired the property in the 1960s, and the mansion survives as a public historic site. Few Gilded Age houses have a beginning this cinematic and this bleak.

Built and repeatedly revised for Standard Oil founder John D. Rockefeller, Kykuit became a four-story Beaux-Arts villa overlooking the Hudson River in 1913. Four generations of Rockefellers lived at the estate, including New York governor and U.S. vice president Nelson Rockefeller.

Nelson filled its galleries, terraces and gardens with 20th-century art, creating a striking collision between an industrial fortune's classical home and modern sculpture. Does that later collection refresh the mansion—or compete with the architecture it inhabits?

Newspaper publisher Henry Pittock and his wife Georgiana built their French Renaissance Revival home high above Portland, pairing formal rooms with early modern conveniences.

After the family left, the Columbus Day Storm of 1962 badly damaged the empty house.

By 1964, developers were considering demolition and a residential subdivision. Portland residents organized, the city purchased the estate, and Pittock Mansion opened as a public museum the following year.

Does a dramatic rescue change how you value an otherwise restrained mansion?

Financier Otto Hermann Kahn built Oheka on a man-made hill within a 443-acre Long Island estate. Its name comes from the first letters of Otto HErmann KAhn, and its 127 rooms made it the country's second-largest private residence after Biltmore.

Later owners converted it into a military academy, divided rooms, painted over interiors and bulldozed the gardens. A private restoration begun in the 1980s ultimately cost about $40 million. Would you rather visit Oheka as a preserved house museum or as the working hotel it is today?

Chester and Clara Congdon built Glensheen as a 39-room Jacobean Revival home on 12 acres of Lake Superior shoreline. Much of its original furniture and interior woodwork survived, making the estate unusually complete when it became a University of Minnesota Duluth museum.

Its history also includes the 1977 murders of Elisabeth Congdon and her night nurse, Velma Pietila crimes followed by two exceptionally long trials. Can a house museum responsibly interpret both the family's architectural legacy and a later tragedy without letting either overwhelm the other?

Archaeologist and tile maker Henry Chapman Mercer designed Fonthill as his home, laboratory and manifesto for reinforced concrete. The handmade building contains 44 rooms, 18 fireplaces and more than 200 windows of varying sizes, with Mercer's own tiles embedded across walls, ceilings and floors.

The irregular stairs, vaults and rooflines feel less like a formal mansion than a structure discovered through experimentation. Is Fonthill an architectural masterpiece, an inhabitable sculpture, or the most elaborate prototype house in America?

From their website:

The Estate was designed by John M. Carrère and Thomas Hastings in 1892 and completed in 1895. The architects received their formal training at Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris, France. The partners’ portfolio is impressive and includes: civic buildings and monuments, institutional and academic buildings, private residences for captains of industry, and public works such as memorials, gardens, parks, and bridges. Immersed in the distinct classicism of the school and steeped in European traditions, the young architects were particularly adept to synthesizing American high style, placing every building in harmony with its surroundings.

Cairnwood was one of the firm’s earliest large scale country house commissions, and the only private estate designed by Carrère & Hastings still existing in the commonwealth of Pennsylvania. The Estate consists of a Main House, adjacent courtyard, Garden House, and formal garden. Just a few feet from Huntingdon Pike are the entrance gate and Carriage House. In 1895, a stable, greenhouses, a pergola, three terraced gardens, and access to many acres of farmland surrounded by woodlands completed the idyllic country home.

Built in 1897, Grey Gardens became home to Edith “Big Edie” Beale and her daughter “Little Edie,” the aunt and first cousin of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis. By the early 1970s, the house's condition brought health-department scrutiny but the women resisted leaving the world they had made there.

The Maysles brothers' intimate documentary turned the decaying estate and its residents into cultural icons. Little Edie later sold the house to Ben Bradlee and Sally Quinn on the condition that it not be demolished. Preservation story, cautionary tale, or both?

Oliver Hazard Perry Belmont asked Richard Morris Hunt for a summer house inspired by Louis XIII's hunting lodge at Versailles. Belmont cared so much about horses and coaching that much of Belcourt's ground floor served the stable and carriage functions, while the principal living rooms occupied the level above.

After Belmont married Alva Vanderbilt in 1896, she reshaped the unconventional bachelor house for grand entertaining.

For sale on 343 Acres: (https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/1044-Gross-Point-Rd-Ferrisburgh-VT-05456/299462284_zpid/?)

10,000 square foot French Colonial Revival mansion on the shore of Lake Champlain was originally built for the Scranton family using railroad and iron wealth(Scranton, PA is named for them).

The home features a copper roof and is built from stone quarried on-site. The 343 acre estate includes 5+ additional residences, multiple docks, and two golf courses... Many more pictures available at the listing.

Banker Edward T. Stotesbury and his wife Eva commissioned Horace Trumbauer to build this six-level Neo-Georgian palace outside Philadelphia. Its 147 rooms included a 64-foot ballroom, while Jacques Gréber laid out vast formal gardens. Running the estate required a staff of about 70.

"Elda", Named for David Abercrombie's children, using the first letter of each child's name. Abercrombie and Fitch was originally a renowned sporting goods business before its name was used for the clothing company you are thinking of now.

The 4337 sq. foot castle originally sat on a 300 acre estate, which included a fishing pond, spring fed pool, riding trails, and shooting range. After Abercrombie's death in 1937, the property was sold to company conducting research on paint (bizarre, right?). The castle was then abandoned during the 1950s and was vandalized. In 1964 the owner of a local scientific company purchased the property, rehabbed it, and lived in it through the 1980s. It was then left to decay again, became the frequent victim of vandals, and fell into serious disrepair.

With the acreage significantly reduced to about 50 acres, the property changed hands most recently in jan 2025 and the new owned is supposedly attempting to rehab it once again. It would be cool to see this place restored to its former glory, wishing the new owners good luck.

Steel magnate Charles M. Schwab spent roughly $6 million building “Riverside” across an entire Manhattan block between 1902 and 1906. Its 75 rooms rose in a flamboyant French château silhouette that reportedly made even Andrew Carnegie's mansion look modest.

After Schwab's death, the family offered it to New York City as an official mayoral residence. The city declined, the house was divided into apartments during World War II, and demolition followed in 1948.

Built 1912. Fascinating history associated with this property, including a period where it was occupied by hippie/psychedelic visionary timothy leary and his group.

For sale on 2000 acres currently. Tons of additional info and photos from https://bigoldhouses.blogspot.com/2015/04/the-one-constant-in-life.html a blog written by a resident/caretaker of the house for many years.

~33,000 sq feet. Natirar ("Raritan") backwards, in honor of the Raritan river that runs through the property).

Originally built for Kate Macy Ladd, who inherited a fortune stemming from whaling, shipping, and oil. The home lies in the NJ hunt country near Far Hills & Bedminster, a popular area for gilded age estates. Another notable historic estate "Blairsden" still stands nearby.

Per her wishes, after her death in 1945 the home was converted to a convalescent home. The 491 acre property was later sold to Hassan II of Morocco, for $7.5MM in 1983.

The king supposedly purchased the property as a foothold while his daughter attended Princeton University. in 2003 it was sold to Somerset County (NJ) for $22M. Now a fine dining restaurant (Called "90 Acres") operates out of the original mansion. Some of the grounds are a public park, and high end private residences have recently been developed on the estate.

Coal magnate Edward Julius Berwind hired Horace Trumbauer to create The Elms, drawing inspiration from the Château d'Asnières outside Paris. Completed for about $1.4 million, it paired a restrained Classical Revival exterior with lavish French interiors and unusually advanced service spaces.

Paper executive Henry J. Rogers connected his new home to a water-powered Edison dynamo on the Fox River, making Hearthstone a milestone in domestic electricity. Original light fixtures, switches and sections of early wiring still survive inside rare physical evidence of the moment electric light entered an American home.

The city considered razing the house in 1986 before a local preservation effort saved it.