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Stan Hywet Hall in Akron, Ohio, USA is a 65 room country house modelled after Compton Wynyates in Warwickshire.  It was built in the early 1900s by F A Siberling, the founder of the Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company.  Seventy of the estate's original 1000 acres remain.  Among the many gardens there is even an English walled garden...  Oh! To be in Akron now that summer is here.  Ring ahead to find out if they are scheduling another 'nook and cranny' tour.

Agecroft Hall (another link) in Richmond, Virginia, USA was actually built in Lancashire in the 15th-century.  Sold at auction in 1925 and purchased by one T C Williams Jr, it was packed up brick-by-brick and shipped across the pond to the States where the Tudor jig-saw puzzle was reassembled.  The 'sunken garden' is reminiscent of the pond garden at Hampton Court Palace.

Also in Richmond, Virginia is Virginia House, built by Virginia and Alexander Weddell.  Stones from England's  12th-century St Sepulchre Priory are incorporated into its walls.  The design bears the influence of Sulgrave Manor (ancestral home of George Washington) and Wormleighton's (ancestral home of Winston Churchill) gatehouse lodge.  The library even has a secret passage.

Before the American Revolution (...which we personally consider to have been an unfortunate misunderstanding between friends), 18th-century Colonial Williamsburg was a British Crown Colony.  This is an absolutely wonderful place for a family vacation here in the 'Colonies' (...U.S.A.).  John D Rockefeller, Jr was the farsighted benefactor who financed the restoration and reconstruction of the Historic Area's 500 buildings.  All of the information you need to plan a visit to Colonial Williamsburg is on their website.  Use their 'Itinerary Builder' to select the sites you want to include in your visit and, then,  print out a map of their locations and your list - including the time needed for your visit.

One day's drive (about 8½ hours, 417 miles) from Colonial Williamsburg  is Asheville, North Carolina and the largest stately home in North America, George Washington Vanderbilt's Biltmore.  Built in the style of a French château, Biltmore shares a common influence with Waddesdon Manor (See our Best of the Best Page.)  Both have stairway towers inspired by the famous renaissance staircase of the Château de Blois in France's Loire Valley.

Perhaps the greatest concentration of stately homes in North America that are open to the public can be found in Newport, Rhode Island.  The somewhat alarming drive over the almost three mile long Newport Suspension Bridge across Narragansett Bay between Jamestown and Newport is more than justified by visits to The Breakers, Chateau-sur-Mer, The Elms, Marble House, Rosecliff and Green Animals Topiary Garden.  These mansions were considered by their owners to be 'summer cottages'!

Three estates of the du Pont family, Alfred I du Pont's Nemours Mansion and Gardens, Henry Francis du Pont's (a man with a photographic memory for American decorative arts) Winterthur Museum & Gardens and Pierre S. du Pont's  Longwood Gardens (...perhaps the greatest garden in North American...), are all located in the Brandywine Valley and a short drive from Wilmington, Delaware.

Inspired by the stately homes of England, Meadow Brook Hall and Dodge Estate  (another link) is located 27 miles north of Detroit on the campus of Oakland University in Rochester, Michigan.  John Dodge was a co-founder of the Dodge Brothers Motor Cars company.  His widowed wife, Matilda, donated the estate as part of a bequest which founded Oakland University.  Like Stan Hywet Hall, a visit to Meadow Brook Hall leaves one with the overwhelming sense that this was the home of a wonderful family, and not just a stuffy museum of times gone by.

Another stately home is the Edsel & Eleanor Ford House which stands on an 87-acre estate located at Grosse Pointe Shores, a fashionable suburb of Detroit, Michigan.  Edsel was the only son of the founder of the Ford Motor Car Company, Henry Ford. The grounds and gardens were designed by Jens Jensen.

A bit further afield in the Midwest - Des Moines, Iowa to be exact -  is the 42-room mansion, Salisbury House.  Completed in 1928, this re-creation of the 500 year old King's House in Salisbury, England was the home of Helen and Carl Weeks.  It was built with the profits from 'foundation make-ups' (face powder and cold cream) in women's cosmetics.  At the present time, an ambitious restoration programme ['program'] is in progress. 

Railway enthusiasts will want to visit the American Orient Express (another link) website for information on luxury rail tours in the USA.  The tours last six to nine 'nights' and vary with the season of the year from a transcontinental 'land cruise', the Gulf coast, National Parks of the West and 'Northwest & Glacier' to a Trans-Canada tour.

 

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Copyright © 1999 - 2005  J. C. Nash. All worldwide rights reserved.
Last modified:  Thursday, 27 October 2005.

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