List of Gilded Age mansions
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The so-called Gilded Age mansions were built in the United States by some of the richest people in the country during the period between 1870 and the early 1900s.
Raised by the nation's industrial, financial and commercial elite who amassed great fortunes coinciding with an era of expansion of the tobacco, railroads, steel and fossil fuels industries, economic, technical and scientific progress, and a complete lack of personal income tax. This made possible the very rich to build true "palaces" in some cases, designed by prominent architects of its day and decorated with antiquities, furnitures, collectibles and works of art, many imported from Europe.
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This small group of nouveau riche, entrepreneur citizens of a relatively young country found context and meaning for their lives and good fortune by thinking of themselves as heirs of a great Western Tradition. They traced their cultural lineage from the Greeks, through the Roman Empire, to the European Renaissance. America's upper classes and merchant classes traveled the world visiting the great European cities and the ancient sites of the Mediterranean, as part of a Grand Tour, collecting and honoring their western cultural heritage. In their travels abroad they also admired the estates of the European nobility and seeing themselves as the American "nobility", they wished to emulate the old world dwellings in American soil.
All these houses are "temples" of social ritual of 19th-century high society, they are the result of the particularization of space, in that a sequence of rooms are separated and intended for a specific sort of activity, such as dining room for gala dinners, ballroom, library, etc.
These elaborate bastions of wealth and power played a social role, made for impressing, entertaining and receiving guests. Relatively few in number and geographically dispersed, the majority were constructed in a variety of European architectural and decorative styles from different times and countries, such as France, England or Italy.
In cinema, the Gilded Age society and mansions are accurately portrayed in Martin Scorsese's The Age of Innocence (1993), which was itself based on Edith Wharton's 1920 novel of the same name.
California
- Leland Stanford Mansion State Historic Park, 1857, Sacramento, CA.
- Ralston Hall, 1864, Belmont, CA.
- McDonald Mansion, 1877, Santa Rosa, CA.
- Mark Hopkins Mansion, 1878 (destroyed by fire following the 1906 San Francisco earthquake)
- Charles Crocker Mansion, 1880s, San Francisco, CA.
- Winchester Mystery House, 1884-1922, San Jose, CA.
- Carson Mansion, 1886, Eureka, CA.
- James C. Flood Mansion, 1886, San Francisco, CA.
- Hearst Castle, San Simeon, CA, built by William Randolph Hearst. Julia Morgan, Architect, 1919-1947, added to National Register of Historic Places in 1957
- Huntington Library, San Marino, CA. Former residence of Henry E. Huntington, now an art gallery.
- Filoli, 1915, Woodside, CA.
- Carolands, 1916, Hillsborough, CA. One of the last of the great mansions built during the Gilded Age.
Connecticut
- Lauder Greenway Estate, 1894, Greenwich. The largest remaining intact Gilded Age estate in Connecticut
Colorado
- Richthofen Castle, 1887
Delaware
- Nemours, 1909
Florida
Miami
- Villa Vizcaya, Miami Dade Art Museum
Palm Beach
Ormond Beach
Georgia
- Millionaires Row, Jekyll Island Club Historic District, 1888
Illinois
- Nickerson House, 1883
- Palmer Mansion, 1885 (demolished 1950)
Massachusetts
- Bellefontaine Mansion, 1912
- Searles Castle, 1888
- Ventfort Hall, 1893
- The Mount, 1902
- Isabella Stewart Gardner House, 1902
- Shadow Brook Farm Historic District, burned down on March 10, 1956
Minnesota
- James J. Hill House, 1891
- Glensheen Mansion, 1908
- Southways Estate (demolished 2018), 1918
Missouri
- Campbell House Museum, 1851
New Jersey
- Florham, 1893
New York
- Beechwood, 1780, enlarged in the 1890s
- Mills Mansion (Staatsburg), 1832, enlarged in 1895/96
- Lyndhurst, 1838
- Olana, 1872
- Glenview (now part of the Hudson River Museum), 1877
- Rockwood Hall, 1886
- Estherwood, 1894
- Woodlea (now Sleepy Hollow Country Club), 1895
- Indian Neck Hall, 1897
- Hyde Park (the Frederick W. Vanderbilt Mansion), 1899
- Idle Hour, 1901
- Waldheim, 1901
- Harbor Hill, 1902 (demolished)
- Arden, 1909
- Kykuit, 1913
- Oheka Castle, 1919
- Alexander Brown House, 1895
New York City
- Villard Houses, 1882
- Petit Chateau, 1882 (demolished)
- Cornelius Vanderbilt II House, 1883 (demolished)
- James Bailey House, 1888
- James Hampden Robb and Cornelia Van Rensselaer Robb House, 1892
- Henry T. Sloane House, 1894
- Mrs. William B. Astor House, 1896 (demolished)
- Gertrude Rhinelander Waldo House, 1898
- William H. Moore House, 1898
- Oliver Gould Jennings House, 1898
- Harry F. Sinclair House, 1898
- Benjamin N. Duke House, 1901
- Andrew Carnegie Mansion, 1901
- Joseph Raphael De Lamar House, 1902
- James A. Burden House, 1905
- Morton F. Plant House, 1905
- Felix M. Warburg House, 1906
- Charles M. Schwab House, 1906 (demolished)
- Henry Clay Frick House, 1914
- Otto H. Kahn House, 1918
North Carolina
- Biltmore, 1895
South Carolina
- Calhoun Mansion, 1876
Ohio
- George B. Cox House, 1894
- Laurel Court, 1907
- Old Governor's Mansion, 1904
- Pinecroft, 1928
- Scarlet Oaks, 1867
- Stan Hywet Hall, 1915
- Taft House, 1820
Pennsylvania
- Grey Towers, 1896
- Cairnwood, 1895
- Elstowe Manor, 1898
- Lynnewood Hall, 1900
- Melmar, 1910
- Whitemarsh Hall, 1921 (demolished 1980)
Rhode Island
Newport
- Belcourt, 1894
- Beechwood, 1851 (remodelled in the 1880s, substantially altered and remodelled 2014-ongoing)
- The Breakers, 1895
- Chateau-sur-Mer, 1852 (remodelled and redecorated in the 1870s)
- Crossways, 1895
- The Elms, 1901
- Marble House, 1892
- Miramar, 1915
- Ochre Court, 1892
- Rosecliff, 1902
- Rough Point, 1892
- Seaview Terrace, 1885 (substantially expanded and remodeled using Washington DC mansion Aladdin's Palace, 1923-1924)
- Vernon Court, 1901
- Vinland Estate, 1882, (now McAuley Hall, Salve Regina University)
Virginia
- Ellerslie, 1856 (extensively remodeled in 1910)
- Maymont, 1893
- Poplar Hill, also known as the Dunnington Mansion, 1897
- P. D. Gwaltney Jr. House, 1901
- Berryman Mansion, 1902
- Roseland Manor, 1887 (burned 1985)
- Cedar Hall, 1906 (demolished 1976)[1][2]
- Swannaoa, 1912
- Branch House, 1916
- Westbourne, 1919
- Merrywood, 1919 (childhood home of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis)
Washington, DC
- Anderson House, 1905
- Townsend House, 1901
Wisconsin
- Pabst Mansion, 1892
- Holway Mansion, 1892