490 Best Sights in USA

Built in 1793, this Federal style home was where Mary Pickersgill hand-sewed the 30 x 42 foot, 15-star, 15-stripe flag that survived the British bombardment of Fort McHenry in 1814 and inspired Francis Scott Key to write "The Star-Spangled Banner." The house contains early 19th century furnishings and American art of the period, including pieces from the Pickersgill family. Outdoors, a map of the United States has been made of stones from the various states. The Jean and Lillian Hofmeister building houses a new, permanent exhibit, Family of Flagmakers, which examines the life and career of Mary Pickersgill and contains the original receipt for the Star-Spangled Banner, on view for the first time in decades.

James Logan may not be a household name, but he was a seminal figure in pre-Revolutionary America. Equal parts visionary, opportunist, and rogue, he was secretary to William Penn and managed the daily affairs of the colony. Logan, who went on to hold almost every important public office in the colonies, designed this 1730 Georgian manor himself and named it for his father's birthplace in Scotland. He used it to entertain local luminaries and Native American tribal delegates. It was also where he kept one of the area's first libraries, at a time when books were looked upon with suspicion. British General Howe claimed Stenton for his headquarters during the Battle of Germantown. The Stenton mansion is a well-curated, stately affair filled with family and period pieces; the site also includes a kitchen wing, barn, and Colonial-style garden. Starting on the hour at 1 pm, 2 pm, and 3 pm, the guided 45-minute tour interprets the life of three generations of the Logan family and the life of the region from the 1720s through the American Revolution. Stenton has one of the best interiors of any of the Germantown homes.  Tours are offered April to late December, Tuesday–Saturday, noon–4.

This 10,000-square-foot Victorian mansion, built in 1886 for hatmaker and philanthropist John B. Stetson, is regarded as Florida's first luxury home. Though the mansion is now a private residence, tours allow you to marvel at the wood parquet floors, intricate interior carvings, and 10,000 panes of original leaded glass windows. You'll also learn about the Gilded Age mansion's rich history, including famous visitors and a "contractor" named Thomas Edison, who installed his friend Stetson's electricity. In November and December, the mansion is decked out with one of the most elaborate Christmas decoration displays in the country.

This 1876 Victorian home is one of the few in the King William Historic District open for touring. Not only was its eclectic architecture—a blend of French Second Empire and Italian Villa styles—copied by other well-to-do San Antonians, but the estate was the city's first to have a telephone (1881) and among the first to install electric lights (1894). Completed in 1876, the house, occupied by lumber magnate Edward Steves, also has a slate mansard roof and delicate floral stenciling on the ceilings. The home is set up as it would have looked at the time it was occupied, with the same fixtures. Admission includes a self-guided tour.

Confederate general Jackson's private life is on display at the Stonewall Jackson House, where he is revealed as a dedicated Presbyterian who was devoted to physical fitness, careful with money, musically inclined, and fond of gardening. The general lived here only two years, while teaching physics and military tactics to the cadets, before leaving for his command in the Civil War. This is the only house he ever owned; it's furnished now with period pieces and some of his belongings.

Robert E. Lee, who became the commander of the Confederate Army, was born in the Great House of Stratford Hall Plantation, one of the country's finest examples of Colonial architecture. Eight chimneys in two squares top the H-shape brick home, built in the 1730s by one of Lee's grandfathers, Colonial governor Thomas Lee. The house contains Robert E. Lee's crib, original family pieces, and period furnishings. The working Colonial plantation covers 1,600 acres and has gardens, a kitchen, smokehouse, laundry, orangery, springhouses, coach house, stables, slave quarters, and a gristmill that grinds from 11 am to 2 pm on the first whole weekend of each month from April through September. The Plantation Dining Room, a log cabin restaurant, serves meals and sandwiches daily from 11 to 3. Its outdoor screened deck overlooks the woodlands.

This Federal-period home has changed hands many times since it was built in 1794 by Richard Bland Lee, Northern Virginia's first representative to Congress. Citizen action in the 20th century saved it from destruction during construction of nearby Dulles Airport; it is now on the Register of National Historic Places. In the 1970s the house and its outbuildings were restored to their original appearance, with a representative kitchen and flower gardens. A 45-minute tour is offered every hour on the hour, and tours of the outbuildings and slave quarters are available daily at 2 pm from mid-March–mid-November. Educational programs, special events, and living-history programs are held here throughout the year.

This was the family home of local architect Thomas Sully, who designed it in 1886. The Queen Anne--style home uses mixed surfaces, including cypress shingles and bricks, on the exterior. Sully was known for his use of deep shades of color and varied textures.

A guide in period costume escorts you through the 1830s home of Washington Irving, whose writings include classics like The Legend of Sleepy Hollow and Rip Van Winkle. The eclectic building, one of the nation's earliest examples of romantic architecture, includes stepped gables that recall Dutch architecture and a curved roof modeled after that of a Spanish monastery. Sunnyside was often called America's Home, because it appeared in many landscape illustrations of the period. Irving's book-lined study is a highlight.

The west-side street where suffragist Susan B. Anthony lived from 1866 until her death in 1906 looks much like it did in her day. The tree out has been replaced by two smaller chestnuts, but many of the neighboring houses still look the same. You can tour the three-story redbrick Victorian and picture Anthony working to get women the right to vote. The visitor center next door was the home of a sister. A park one block north has a statue of Anthony and friend Frederick Douglass having tea.

As war stories go, the most defining for Texas is, of course, the Alamo. While Davy Crockett and James Bowie are the famous names you’ll hear linked with that infamous 1836 battle, it was Susanna Dickinson who, as the brave survivor, carried the news of its fall to Sam Houston. The historic frontier woman became a renowned Texas figure and was dubbed the “Messenger of the Alamo.” Today, her "rubble rock" home, located on the historic Brushy Square Plaza, is open to the public. It showcases her personal belongings and artifacts in a permanent exhibit, with occasional traveling exhibits related to the Alamo and the Republic of Texas era.

Family portraits and period furnishings fill this 1798 Greek Revival home built for General Abraham Ten Broeck, a former Albany mayor. The tour takes you through the house and well-kept gardens.

The governor's opulent residence is an excellent example of Second Empire architecture, commissioned during the 1860s for an Iowa millionaire and built at a cost of $250,000. The 18,000-square-foot mansion earned status as a National Historic Landmark in 2003. Perched on a hill, it looks out over downtown Des Moines and is a major focal point from downtown. The governor and his family reside in a third-floor private apartment that is off-limits, but the hour-long guided tour explores other areas and outlines the storied history of the building.

A Polish general who later became a national hero in his homeland, Kosciuszko came to the United States in 1776 to fight in the Revolution, one of the first foreign volunteers in the war. The plain three-story brick house, built around 1776, features a series of exhibits that display artifacts from six Polish museums, depicting Kosciuszko's life in his homeland as well as some of his original possessions. An eight-minute film (in English and Polish) portrays the general's activities during the Revolution.

Dating to the 1830s, this Greek Revival cottage sits amid a plantationlike garden, surrounded by a copy of the original white-picket fence. Businessman Thomas Toby moved to New Orleans and had the house raised aboveground to protect it from flooding.

Scattered throughout the pines of Carmel-by-the-Sea are houses and cottages originally built for the writers, artists, and photographers who discovered the area decades ago. Among the most impressive dwellings is Tor House, a stone cottage built in 1919 by poet Robinson Jeffers on a craggy knoll overlooking the sea. Portraits, books, and unusual art objects fill the low-ceilinged rooms. The highlight of the small estate is Hawk Tower, a detached edifice set with stones from the Carmel coastline—as well as one from the Great Wall of China. The docents who lead tours (six people maximum) are well informed about the poet's work and life. Reservations (by phone or online) are required.

A Flemish Revival mansion built in 1913 for John B. Kendrick, cattleman and one of Wyoming's first governors and senators, is now the Trail End State Historic Site. The furnishings and exhibits in the home are designed to depict early-20th-century ranching on the Plains. Highlights include elegant hand-carved woodwork and a third-floor ballroom.

While in Independence, you can visit the nearby Truman Home, Truman's Summer White House.

Originally owned by the Randolph family, Tuckahoe is 7 miles west of Richmond, on the James River. Thomas Jefferson spent his boyhood years here, from 1745 until 1752. In fact, he began his studies in the one-room schoolhouse that still stands on the beautifully landscaped grounds, which are open daily for self-guided tours. Guided tours of the house are by appointment only, except during the special Christmas tour in December.

Stop at Q Street between 31st and 32nd Streets, and look through the trees to the north, to the top of a sloping lawn, to see the neoclassical Tudor Place, designed by Capitol architect Dr. William Thornton for one of Martha Washington's granddaughters. Completed in 1816, the house remained in the family for six generations, hosting countless politicians, dignitaries, and military leaders. On the house tour, you can see the most extensive collection of George and Martha Washington items on public display outside Mount Vernon, Francis Scott Key's law desk, and spurs belonging to soldiers executed for serving as spies during the Civil War. You can only visit the house by guided tour (given hourly; the last tour at 3 pm), but before and afterward, until 4 pm, you can wander freely with a map through the formal garden full of roses and boxwoods, many of which are more than a century old. Admission to the garden grounds is free, but reserved tickets are required.

Two Italianate Victorians stand out on the 1800 block of California Street. The beauty at 1834, the Wormser-Coleman House, was built in the 1870s. Coleman bought the lot next door, giving this private property an unusually spacious yard for the city, even for this luxurious neighborhood.

Eatonton is the birthplace of celebrated novelist Joel Chandler Harris, of Br'er Rabbit and Uncle Remus fame. This museum, built from authentic slave cabins, houses countless carvings, paintings, first-edition books, and other artwork depicting the characters made famous by the imaginative author. It's on the grounds of a park. Note the museum closes for lunch from noon until 1 daily, so plan your visit accordingly.

For more than 100 years, the Valentine, established in 1898, has celebrated one of America's most historic cities. It has collected more than a million objects—one of the nation's largest collections focusing on a single city—including preserved photographs, textiles, and artifacts, and interprets 400 years of Richmond's history through items of everyday life. Wickham House (1812), a part of the Valentine, is more rightly a mansion; it was designed by architect Alexander Parris, the creator of Boston's Faneuil Hall. John Wickham was Richmond's wealthiest citizen of the time, and Daniel Webster and Zachary Taylor were frequent guests. The last owner of the house, Mann Valentine Jr., left a bequest in his will to turn the home into a museum. Mann's brother, sculptor Edward Valentine, worked from his carriage house studio to create the Robert E. Lee memorial at Washington and Lee University, and the famous statue of Thomas Jefferson in Richmond's grand Jefferson Hotel. His studio is one of only four surviving 19th-century sculptors' studios in the United States open to the public.

Built in 1869, this stately Italianate mansion served as the German consulate in the early 20th century, until the start of World War II. The house has been meticulously maintained and furnished with period pieces, and is now mainly a venue for private receptions and special events. Highlights include a carved-oak staircase and mantelpiece and 24-karat gilt moldings and sconces.

At this living-history museum, costumed guides are strategically placed throughout the estate, which includes an 18th-century stone manor house and an 18th-century tavern. The house includes some of its original Georgian and Federal furnishings. Spinning, weaving, and other demonstrations are held in a tenant house adjacent to the tavern. Admission is by timed tour only.

Built in 1893, Ventfort Hall was the summer "cottage" of Sarah Morgan, the sister of financier J. P. Morgan. Lively tours offer a peek into the lifestyles of Lenox's superrich "cottage class." The museum's temporary exhibits explore the role of Lenox and the Berkshires as the era's definitive mountain retreat. Victorian high tea served during guest lectures and workshops is among the highlights.

Built between 1858 and 1860, this Italianate mansion is widely regarded as the most sumptuously ornamented dwelling of its period remaining in the country. Architect Henry Austin designed the house for hotelier Ruggles Morse and his wife, Olive. The interior design—everything from the plasterwork to the furniture (much of it original)—is the only surviving commission of New York designer Gustave Herter. Behind the elegant brownstone exterior of this National Historic Landmark are colorful frescoed walls and ceilings, ornate marble mantelpieces, gilded gas chandeliers, a magnificent 6-foot-by-25-foot stained-glass ceiling window, and a freestanding mahogany staircase. A guided tour runs about 45 minutes and covers all the architectural highlights. Victorian era–themed gifts and art are sold in the museum shop, and the museum often has special theme events.

This 38-room estate was completed in 1929, a precise copy of a 1,200-year-old Viking castle. Its original owner, Lora Knight, furnished it with Scandinavian antiques and hired artisans to build period reproductions. The sod roof sprouts wildflowers each spring. A steep 1-mile-long trail from the Emerald Bay lookout leads down to Vikingsholm. The hike back up is challenging, especially for those not acclimated to the elevation, although there are benches and stone culverts to rest on. (Avoid the hike by taking a cruise; check the website for vendor information.)

At the 150-foot peak of Fannette Island are the ruins of a stone structure called the Tea House, built for Knight's guests to enjoy refreshments. The island is off-limits from February through mid-June to protect nesting Canada geese. The rest of the year, it's open for day use.