20 Great American Homes Open for Touring

There are so many great places to visit in America it's hard to choose where to go for a summer vacation, a weekend jaunt or for the retired couple traveling our great nation. So I thought it would be handy to have a list of Great American Homes that are open for touring all year round.

We will start with my resident state of Alabama and end with Virginia. All in all there are 100s of Great American Homes in our country but I am going to tell you about 21 of them. Some of these beautiful homes are warm and cozy and some are just out of the ordinary!

Alabama

Gaineswood National Historical landmark
Gaineswood was once the centerpiece of a huge plantation in Alabama's Black Belt, a region named for its dark, fertile soil. One of the few southern houses that still contain its original furnishings, the Greek Revival mansion evokes the height of elegance in the antebellum era.

In 1843 Gen. Nathan Bryan Whitfield, a wealthy cotton planter, gifted inventor, musician, and architect, purchased a 480-acre property near George Gaines. The general gradually transformed the two-room log cabin that stood on the grounds into an imposing villa.

The erudite general spent almost two decades directing the work and refining the 20-room house. Whitfield lacked formal training as an architect; nevertheless, he sketched floor plans, deliberated over proportions, supervised workmen, and pored over the pattern books of the popular New York architect Minard Lafever. The general designed lathes, routers, and other precision machinery to speed the fashioning of cornices, moldings, and pilasters. The former cabin evolved into a mansion that by 1860 had grown to become the social center of the region.

Although Gaineswood was spared the destruction that befell so many plantation homes during the Civil War, its glory days ended with the war. The general went bankrupt and was forced to sell Gaineswood, which was eventually abandoned. Goats took up residence in the drawing room and a mulberry tree put down roots in the dinning room. The state of Alabama acquired the estate in 1968. The villa's subsequent rebirth lends truth to a sign on the grounds, written in Latin, which translate as: "Still Here Are the Things of Yesterday."

The beige house with white trim contains 20 rooms embellished with friezes and medallions of wood and plaster. Family portraits, many painted by the general himself, hang on some of the walls. Flanking the main hallway are two reception rooms, one for ladies and one for gentlemen, which lead into a magnificent drawing room. Corinthian columns line the room and elaborate plasterwork adorns the ceiling. Thirteen full-length vis-à-vis mirrors reflect multiple images, creating an illusion of greater space.

Original Chippendale rosewood furniture, Italian marble statuary, jib windows, and Venetian glass in this room make it the epitome of splendor and charm.

A domes skylight tops the dining room and features pocket doors. A rosewood case against one wall was designed to hold the silver ornamental stand that graces the table in the dining room.

The master bedroom features ionic columns and an original custom-made bed carved with a pineapple motif, the symbol of hospitality. The family bedroom down the hall is decorated with columns patterned after the Tower of Winds in Athens, Greece. It is said that the ghost of a former housekeeper's sister wanders about the mansion singing her favorite melodies.

Gaineswood National Historical Landmark is located in Demopolis, AL

Next we will venture across country to California

Larkin House, Monterey State Historical Park

Thomas Oliver Larkin built a house in Monterey, California, that set the standard for a style known as Monterey Colonial, which is characterized by the use of adobe and glass in a symmetrical two-story floor plan. Larkin was born in 1802 in the small town of Charlestown, near Boston. Orphaned at age 16, he lived and worked for a time in the Carolinas before sailing from Boston in 1831 on a tough seven-month voyage around Cape Horn that would deliver him to a new life in California, then a Mexican territory.

It was during this sea voyage that Larkin met Rachel Hobson Home, a Boston sea captain's widow. He later married her and together they had six children.

In Monterey, Larkin worked for his half-brother, John Rogers Cooper, a sea captain turned merchant. Cooper had settled there nine years earlier, become a Mexican citizen, and changed his name to Juan Bautista Cooper. Three years later Larkin set up his own business, trading in lumber, hides, fur, potatoes, and cattle. His work took him as far a field as the Hawaiian Islands and made him a wealthy man.

Larkin set up his enterprises in a house built on a plot of land that he had bought in 1835 for $12.40. The house featured adobe and redwood construction. Adobe is a Spanish word derived from Arabic that refers to a sun-dried brick of clay and straw. It also had wrap-around verandas and a walled garden. The ceilings in the first-floor rooms were made of wide hand-hewn planks.

The house sports many New England features, including a floor plan that radiates from a central hall, a symmetrical two-story construction, multipaned glass windows, an interior staircase, and a neat, compact shape.

His appointment as the United States Consul to Mexico in 1842; the first and only one affirmed Thomas Larkin's status as a prominent public figure. He held that post for four years, playing a vital role in the transferal of California from Mexican to American control. Dedicated to a peaceful annexation. Larkin was distressed by the outbreak of war between the United States and Mexico in 1846 and the subsequent hostile annexation of California.

In 1850, the same year that California entered the Union, Larkin moved with is family to New York City. He returned to California a few years later and settled in San Francisco, where he died in 1858.

Larkin, Monterey State Historical Park is located in Monterey, CA

Next we will travel way up to the east coast to Connecticut.

Gillette Castle State Park

A bizarre Rhinelike castle overlooking the Connecticut River is the legacy of William Gillette (1853-1937), the celebrated actor and playwright. Gillette designed the quirky mansion himself, and spent about $1 million to have it built. The money was only a portion of the ample earnings he made by portraying Sherlock Holmes on the stage.

The castle expresses the eccentric personality of its creator. Among its unusual features are a table mounted on tracks and 47 doors locked with ingenious latches designed by Gillette. He also installed mirrors in his bedroom that were angled so that he could see who was downstairs.

Gillette introduced the Sherlock Holmes trademark accessories to the stage; the deerstalker cap, Inverness cape, and curved pipe. He played the eccentric sleuth more than 1,300 times and wrote and staged his own dramatizations of Sherlock Holmes' adventures. Gillette also penned two Civil War tales called Held by the Enemy and Secret Service.

Gillette married in 1882, but six years later his wife died of a ruptured appendix. Widowed and childless, Gillette turned his attention and considerable wealth to building a dream house. In 1913, while cruising in his riverboat, the Aunt Polly, he found the ideal site: 122 acres on a peak known as the Seventh Sister, the last in a row of hills along the Connecticut River.

Gillette designed a castle with walls three to four feet thick at the base, tapering to roughly two feet at the top. He hired a team of 26 men, who labored for five years to construct a steel framework covered over with native fieldstone.

Shortly after the castle's completion in 1919, Gillette built a reduced-scale, three-mile-long railroad with a locomotive on the grounds. Manning the throttle himself, he took his quests on tours of the gardens.

The home's doorways and cabinets were made of hand-carved southern white oak. Gillette covered the walls with Javanese raffia matting to absorb humidity and lit the rooms with Tiffany lamps and wall sconces decorated with bits of colored glass bottles he had solicited from his friends.

You can tour the uniquely furnished rooms, including nine bedrooms, seven bathrooms, a kitchen and pantry, a third-floor suite, a library, and a 1,500-square-foot living room. To protect the finish on the house's hardwood floors, the dining room table was set on metal tracks and moved with the pull of a drawstring.

Gillette Castle State Park is located in East Haddam, CT.

In the next series of 21 Great American Homes Open for Touring,
we will venture south, down the east coast into Florida, up to the Midwest, Illinois and Iowa.