Image via Complex Original
Can you imagine living in a high-modern masterpiece designed by architectural greats like Frank Lloyd Wright, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, or Walter Gropius? Now these livable works of art are open to the public as museums, but at one point, American elite with last names like Vanderbilt and du Pont called these mouments home. From George Washington's headquarters during the Revolutionary War to the Stahl House in Los Angeles, which has become a pop culture icon, featured various in films and photo shoots, take a tour of all the greatest homes in the US with 20 Must-Visit American Homes.
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Mark Twain House
Architect: Edward Tuckerman Potter
Location: Hartford, Ct.
Year Built: 1874
In 1874, Mark Twain moved into his home in Hartford, Ct. partially for the beauty of the area, partially because it was one of the wealthiest neighborhoods in the US, and partially because it was home to 12 publishing companies. Inside his Hartford home, Twain would write some of his most famous novels. The little Connecticut town was like a literary haven, filled with other famous American writers.
Twain's opulent home was in Victorian Gothic Revival style with the top floor serving as the 17th century equivalent of a man den, housing a billiards room where Twain's gentleman friends would come and smoke cigars. Twain famously said of the space, "There ought to be a room in this house to swear in. It's dangerous to have to repress an emotion like that." Since Twain left the house in 1891, it has undergone a multi-million dollar restoration to be turned into a museum.
The Gamble House
Architect: Greene & Greene
Location: Pasadena, Calif.
Year Built: 1908
After David Berry Gamble of Cincinnati's Procter & Gamble Company retired in 1895, he and his wife took up residence in nearby hotel resorts. In 1907, they decided to purchase a lot on a private street in Pasadena, Calif. to build a permanent home. It just so happened that the architectural firm Greene & Greene was constructing a home on the property next door. Gamble, impressed with the two brothers' building, met with them and commissioned them to build a house. The final construction is a gem of the Arts and Crafts movement with Japanese influences and a focus on woodwork.
Chateau-sur-mer
Architect: Built by Seth Bradford, remodeled by Richard Morris Hunt
Location: Newport, R.I.
Year Built: 1851
As the former home of a distinguished Rhode Island governor, the lavish Chateau-sur-Mer would have satisfied even the Queen's regal taste. In fact, there was no home grander in Newport from the time it was finished in 1852 until Vanderbilt homes started emerging in the 1890s. Somehow the mansard roofs atop the stone walls make the mansion look posh and homey at the same time. After Hunt's renovations in the 1870s in Second Empire style, the house became emblematic of the popular designs of the later 19th century. In 2006, the Chateau-sur-Mer became a National Historic Landmark.
Bayou Bend
Architect: John F. Staub
Location: Houston
Year Built: 1927
This Classical Revival mansion not in itself remarkable, but it currently houses an impressive collection of decorative arts, paintings, and one of the best collection of furniture in the US. The house is now run by the Museum of Fine Arts Houston. Before it became a gallery, the home was occupied by philanthropist Ima Hogg, a tree lover who only let one tree get cut down when the home and gardens were constructed. In 1957, Hogg donated Bayou Bend and her art collection to the MFAH.
Nemours
Architect: Carrere and Hastings
Location: Wilmington, Del.
Year Built: 1909-1910
Alfred I. du Pont, an American industrialist of the welthy du Pont family, wanted to give his wife, Alicia, a gift, so he had this mansion built for her in French Rococo style, her favorite. Du Pont hired Carrere and Hastings, a New York architecture firm, to create the 18th century European style house. The home includes enormous chandeliers, masterpiece paintings, and opulent molding in every room. Stepping onto the grounds is like a trip back to the quarters of Marie Antoinette. The gardens are a treasure onto their own, landscaped after the gardens of Versailles. The house shares the grounds for the Alfred I. duPont Hospital for Children.
Fallingwater
Architect: Frank Lloyd Wright
Location: Mill Run, Pa.
Year Built: 1936-39
Possibly Frank Lloyd Wright's crowning achievement, Fallingwater sits in a remote location in southwestern Pennsylvania. The impressive modern building was created for a Pittsburg businessman, Edgar Kaufmann Sr., as his family's summer home between 1936-39. The cantilevered structure stretches gracefully over a waterfall—so much so that Kaufmann was anxious about the design and tried to make amendments behind Wright's back during the building process. Inspired by Japanese design, Fallingwater was supposed to be wholly integrated into the surrounding nature. In 1964, it opened to the public as a museum.
Taliesin
Architect: Frank Lloyd Wright
Location: Spring Green, Wis.
Year Built: 1911
It seems only fitting for Frank Lloyd Wright's summer home to be of equal stature to Fallingwater. The expansive three-wing building sits in a Wisconsin valley and stretches out onto the surrounding greenery. For this project, Wright constructed the chimneys and stone piers of the home out of local limestone and incorporated sand from the Wisconsin River into the stucco walls in his attempt to experiment with organic architecture. Wright started working on Talisin in 1911 after leaving his first wife because of his affair with another woman and her husband. It was also here Wright designed Fallingwater and the Guggeinheim.
Calhoun Mansion
Architect: William P. Russel
Location: Charleston, S.C.
Year Built: 1876
George W. Williams commissioned Russel to build this Italianate style house. At the time, it was one of the most impressive post-Civil War manors, and it was meant to reaffirm local pride in Charleston after the war. The 35-room home boasts a 75-foot dome with paintings and lighting designed by Louis Comfort Tiffany. After Williams died, the house fell into abandon and it was condemned in 1972. A wealthy Charleston local purchased the house and spent 25 years and $5 million restoring it.
Campbell House Museum
Architect: Edgar & Walsh
Location: St. Louis
Year Built: 1851
A visit to the Campbell House Museum is like a trip back to Queen Victoria's England. A wealthy businessman Robert Campbell bought the house in 1854 and extended it to include an enlarged kitchen, a dining room, and even servant rooms. After Campbell's last surviving child passed away in 1938, no one was sure what to do with the house and its contents. Soon, experts were called to examine the home. They were amazed to find the interior of the house decked out in the most complete arrangement of furnishings and antiques from the middle Victorian period they had ever seen. Relatives to the Campbells and local foundations succeeded in raising funds to save most of the house's furnishings. The Campbell House opened as a museum in 1943.
Dumbarton House
Architect: Samuel Jackson
Location: D.C.
Year Built: 1800
The first Register of Treasury, Joseph Nourse, was the first person to live in this Georgetown gem. The Federal style house has a large collection of decorative art and furniture. The mansion also holds an extensive archive on the Nourse family. It has been preserved to show visitors what life was like during Colonial times. Today, it is the headquarters for The National Society of The Colonial Dames of America, and it is also used for weddings and events.
Farnsworth House
Architect: Ludwig Mies van der Rohe
Location: South of Plano, Ill.
Year Built: 1951
Mies van der Rohe's country retreat 55 miles outside of Chicago was the emblem of high modern design. Built in International style, the house is made out of a simple post and lintel structure with glass walls. The modern ideal was to strip down the home to its essential structure, and this home does just that. It was also meant to be integrated with nature. The house was built for Dr. Edith Farnsworth.
Glass House
Architect: Philip Johnson
Location: New Canaan, Ct.
Year Built: 1949
The architect Philip Johnson built himself this glass house, mimicking the high modern style of Mies van de Rohe's Farnsworth House. The Glass House is an important milestone in modern architecture, and Johnson lived in the house for 58 years. The property also includes other treasures of modern design—a gate house, guest house, painting gallery, and sculpture garden.
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Longfellow House
Architect: Remodeled by Andrew Craigie
Location: Cambridge, Mass.
Year Built: 1759
This Colonial-era home was originally built for a man who fled to Europe during the Revolutionary War, after which George Washington used it as his headquarters. It later became home to the poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow who lived there until he died. The house was built in Georgian style and was once so popular, that in the 20th century, Sears, Roebuck and Company sold the blueprints to the house so anyone could make their own version.
Olana
Architect: Calvert Vaux
Location: Greenport, New York
Year Built: 1872
It's only expected that Frederic Edwin Church, a leading figure in the Hudson River School of landscape painting, would reside in a picturesque home overlooking the Hudson River Valley. Olana looks like a foreign castle, comprised of a blend of Victorian, Persian, and Moorish styles. The structure is made from a combination of stone, brick, and polychrome, which are covered in elaborate stencils designed by Church himself. Church lived in the mansion with his wife and used it as his studio. Inside, the building boasts many of the exotic goods and trinkets he collected from his travels throughout the world.
Biltmore Estate
Architect: Richard Morris Hunt and Frederick Law Olmsted
Location: Asheville, N.C.
Year Built: 1889-95
This 250-room house is the largest privately owned home in the US. The Châteauesque style house, mimicked after French chateaus and European estates, was built by George Washington Vanderbilt II. The home was so grand that it even had its own village, and its gardens are some of the most famous examples of French and English gardens in the US. The furnishings are almost like an anthropology museum with furniture, prints, tapestries, and decorative arts from all over the world, dating back as far as 1400. Today the estate is 8,000 acres and owned by the Biltmore Company.
Monticello
Architect: Thomas Jefferson
Location: Charlottesville, Va.
Year Built: 1772
Thomas Jefferson's Neoclassical plantation home was styled after the great architect Andrea Palladio's Renaissance villas. It's most similar to Villa Rotonda, which is located in Venice, Italy. Both buildings have the circular dome in the center and protruding rooms in every direction. But Jefferson did an amazing job of adapting the Renaissance beauty to his functional needs. For example, Jefferson included a world-class garden that produced food and acted as a site for nature research.
Pabst Mansion
Architect: George Bowman Ferry
Location: Milwaukee
Year Built: 1892
You probably don't associate PBR with first class living, but this mansion was once the home to Captain Frederick Pabst of the Pabst Brewing Company. The Pabst family lived in the Flemish Renaissance Revival house at the turn of the 19th century, and then it became a home for Archbishops. In 1978, Wisconsin Heritages, Inc. purchased the mansion, saving it from being demolished.
Gropius House
Architect: Walter Gropius
Location: Lincoln, Mass.
Year Built: 1938
Walter Gropius was the founder of the Bauhaus movement, and he built his home in his famed style. Gropius designed his home for maximum efficiency and use, mixing materials from New England with industrial elements to create the house. He wrote of his home in Scope of Architecture, "This fusion of the regional spirit with a contemporary approach to design produced a house that I would never have built in Europe with its entirely different climatic, technical and psychological background." The house was also furnished with Marcel Breuer furniture.
Graceland
Architect: Furbringer & Ehrman
Location: Memphis, Tennessee
Year Built: 1939
Graceland is known all over the country as a home fit for a king. It is the huge property where Elvis Presley lived, died, and is rumored to haunt. The mansion was originally a farmland but now is a tan limestone building that houses 23 rooms, including eight bedrooms and bathrooms. The home was built in the Colonial Revival style, but Elvis made his own adjustments. He added athletic facilities like a swimming pool and racquetball court, a wrought-iron music-themed gate, and the famous jungle room that has its very own waterfall.
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Stahl House
Architect: Pierre Koenig
Location: Los Angeles
Year Built: 1960
The Stahl House was build as part of the Case Study Houses, a program that ran from 1945-66 where top architects were commissioned to design inexpensive homes during the post-WWII housing boom. This house is the epitome of modern Los Angeles architecture, and it was made famous by a Julius Shulman photo taken of two women sitting behind the glass. Out of this list, this home most appears in pop culture, featured in various films, fashion shoots, and even a video game.
