10 Unique Historic Houses That Are Museums You Can Visit

Step back in time to learn more about these notable homes and those who used to live there

Elvis Presley, seen here in 1957, bought Graceland that year at 22. Visitors to house museums can gain insight into the lives of previous residents.

Michael Ochs/Getty Images

Sharon McDonnell,

AARP

Published October 31, 2024

A visit to the home of a famous writer, musician, artist or historical figure is a window into his or her life, era and achievements, with special appeal for older adults. “From my experience, folks over 50 are more likely to be interested in learning when they’re traveling, versus entertainment, relaxation and nightlife,” says Kelsey Knoedler Perri, public relations director at Road Scholar, a tour operator for people 50-plus which often visits house museums such as Graceland and Biltmore. The company’s travelers “don’t want to just look at lovely architecture, they want to learn about the architecture, hear the stories of the people who lived in that home, and understand its significance in the context of history.”

According to the AARP 2024 Travel Trends survey, 63 percent of people 50-plus planned to travel in the U.S. this year.

For Bathsheba J. Malsheen, a board member of the Victorian Alliance of San Francisco, a preservation organization that conducts house tours of Victorian homes, “Older homes often glow with exquisite craftsmanship and a patina of age, and exude a sense of comfort and warmth.” Having lived in historic houses for more than 50 years, “I truly appreciate the ornate exterior detailing and interior moldings, … the decorated ceilings, and the liberal use of period-appropriate wallpapers.”

These 10 house museums should top your list if you’re interested in taking a step back in time.

The living room of this Colonial Revival mansion is subdued with white furniture and stained-glass peacock panels.

Simon Lambert/Redux

Graceland, Memphis, Tennessee

More than 600,000 people a year visit the home of Elvis Presley. The flamboyant King of Rock ’n’ Roll lived in this staid-looking Colonial Revival mansion from 1957, when he bought it at age 22, until his death in 1977. The living room is surprisingly subdued (white furniture, rug and piano, and stained-glass peacock panels). Presley recorded 16 songs in the “Jungle Room,” whose flashy décor features carved Polynesian-style wooden chairs, green shag carpeting on the floor and ceiling, and a faux waterfall. He lived with his parents, grandmother, and later wife Priscilla and daughter, Lisa Marie, at Graceland, and is buried on its grounds. The musician’s collection of over 20 cars, custom private jets, gaudy jumpsuits and jewelry, best-selling records, exhibits from the movie Elvis and his influence on music are in an entertainment complex across the street.

“Graceland appeals to the over 50 population throughout the world because it is an era which they can relate based on maturity, growth and rebellion of their youth,” says Terrie Dal Pozzo, who leads Road Scholar’s Music Cities tour that includes Memphis. “It’s apples and oranges [compared to] other historical homes.”

Cost: Starting at $82. Entertainment complex-only tour (no Graceland) is $49.75. Adults 65-plus receive a 6 percent discount on select tours.

Pro tip: Graceland’s 450-room luxury hotel is across the street.

Hearst Castle, which was designed by Julia Morgan, features a stunning indoor pool in a turquoise mosaic-tiled room.

Gregor Hohenburg/Redux

Hearst Castle, San Simeon, California

Publishing magnate William Randolph Hearst’s ornate mansion will remind you of a European palace. Thousands of artworks, including 14th to 18th century ceilings from Spain and Italy, a third-century Roman marble sarcophagus depicting Apollo and the nine Muses, and a sculpture of an Egyptian lion-headed goddess adorn the property. The vast hilltop estate at Hearst Castle, which was designed by Julia Morgan, California’s first woman architect, features the main 68,500-square-foot mansion and its stunning indoor pool in a turquoise mosaic-tiled room, an outdoor Neptune Pool surrounded by classical-style statues, guest cottages and gardens.

Gossipy tours discuss Hearst (who previewed his newspaper pages every night in his Gothic Study beneath a 15th century Spanish ceiling), his mistress, actress Marion Davies, and celebrity guests such as Winston Churchill and Charlie Chaplin. Specialty tours focus on rooms or themes unexplored on basic tours, like Julia Morgan, Upstairs Suites and Art under the Moonlight. About a four-hour drive south of San Francisco or north of Los Angeles, it’s 6 miles from Cambria, a small arty town on California’s Central Coast stretch of Highway 1, a scenic coastal route.

Cost: Starting at $35.

Biltmore, a 250-room mansion, was built for George Vanderbilt from 1889 to 1895.

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Biltmore, Asheville, North Carolina

The biggest private home in the U.S., Biltmore is a 250-room, 35-bedroom, 65-fireplace mansion built from 1889 to 1895 to resemble a French chateau for George Vanderbilt, a grandson of railroad magnate Cornelius Vanderbilt. Frederick Law Olmsted, who designed New York’s Central Park, landscaped Biltmore, which now features 8,000 acres of grounds and 75 acres of gardens, and considered it his crowning achievement. The estate features formal and informal gardens, over 20 miles of hiking and biking trails, and Blue Ridge Mountains views. Treasures in the mansion include an 18th-century 64-foot-long ceiling painting of the Roman goddess of the dawn, paintings by Monet and Renoir and a 16th century Belgian tapestry. A winery and multiple restaurants are on-site, while art exhibits are in a Biltmore venue 3 miles away. The current exhibit of Dale Chihuly glass art is available through Jan. 5, 2025. Biltmore, which closed in the wake of flooding from Hurricane Helene in the Asheville area, plans to reopen Nov. 2.

Cost: Starting at $70. Tour with art exhibit starts at $125. Adults 65-plus can receive discounts of $8-$13 off.

Pro tip: Three lodging types are on-site: a luxury inn with a spa and fine-dining restaurant, moderate-priced hotel near the winery, and four cottages.

Mabel Dodge Luhan House offers workshops in writing, art, creativity, clothing design and yoga year-round.

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Mabel Dodge Luhan House, Taos, New Mexico

New York heiress Mabel Dodge Luhan bought this simple adobe house in 1918 with her Native American husband, and expanded it into an arts salon where Ansel Adams, Martha Graham, D.H. Lawrence and Georgia O’Keefe once stayed. Traditional design features include beehive-shaped kiva fireplaces, whole-log ceiling beams and colorful textiles. A 10-minute walk from downtown Taos, Mabel Dodge Luhan House offers workshops in writing, art, creativity, clothing design and yoga year-round.

Cost: Free. But call first; workshops sometimes preclude visits. Lodgings are on-site.

Samuel Clemens lived with his wife and children in the 25-room house — known as Mark Twain House — from 1874 to 1891.

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Mark Twain House, Hartford, Connecticut

Samuel Clemens, the Missouri-born Mississippi River boatman who reinvented himself as a writer after life as a newspaper reporter, wrote his most famous books, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, in this Victorian Gothic mansion. From 1874-91, Clemens, who renamed himself after a nautical term, lived with his wife, children and many pets in the red-brick 25-room house. His next-door neighbor was Harriet Beecher Stowe, whose book Uncle Tom’s Cabin helped fuel the anti-slavery movement. A wise observer of human nature, Clemens also coined epigrams still relevant today, such as “Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry and narrow-mindedness” and “Always do right. This will gratify some people and astonish the rest.”

Tours at the house, which features Moroccan, Chinese, Japanese and Turkish design motifs, include general, living history (an actor plays a household member on a typical day) and ghost tours that discuss the Victorian era’s fascination with spiritualism. Rotating exhibits, on themes such as Clemens’ vacations (he was unusually well-traveled for a man of his day), and a film about him by filmmaker Ken Burns, are shown. Mark Twain House also offers a rich program of events, from author talks on late-in-life comebacks and triumphs, bird lore and symbolism, and oddity-collecting to workshops on writing and crafts. The house also sponsors an annual $25,000 fiction prize since 2016, underwritten by thriller writer David Baldacci.

Cost: Starting at $28 for the general house tour; $26 for adults 65-plus.

Washington Irving purchased this stone Dutch-style cottage next to the Hudson River in 1835.

Courtesy Historic Hudson Valley

Sunnyside, Irvington, New York

Washington Irving, best-known as the author of The Legend of Sleepy Hollow and Rip van Winkle and America’s first internationally famous writer, purchased this stone Dutch-style cottage next to the Hudson River in 1835. He also coined the nickname “Gotham” for New York City and the term “Knickerbocker” for its residents (hello, Batman and the New York Knicks basketball team), the latter after his pen name for A History of New York. In his book Tales of the Alhambra, Irving popularized the idea of Spain – where he was the U.S. envoy from 1842-46 – as a romantic, exotic travel destination. There are even road signs pointing to the Route of Washington Irving in Andalusia, plus brochures and guidebooks. Irving added a Spanish-style tower to Sunnyside, where he died in 1859. Outdoor night performances of the spooky Legend short story about the Headless Horseman are offered seasonally.

Cost: Starting at $20; $18 for adults 65-plus.

Marble House is one of the most famous mansions of the Gilded Age in Newport, Rhode Island.

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Marble House, Newport, Rhode Island

Marble House, the most opulent of the Gilded Age Mansions in Newport, was modeled after the Petit Trianon in Versailles. It was built with 500,000 cubic feet of marble in Beaux Arts style from 1888-1892. The mansion was a birthday present from William Vanderbilt (brother of George) to his wife, Alva. It features ultra-opulent décor, a rose-colored marble dining room and a Chinese Tea House, a red-and-green pavilion modeled after 12th century Chinese garden pavilions. A major philanthropist for women’s rights, Alva Vanderbilt Belmont held rallies for the cause in the Tea House and commissioned “Votes for Women” plates and cups. She caused a scandal when she divorced Vanderbilt after 20 years, and married Oliver Belmont (whose mansion, Belcourt, is down the street).

Cost: $25.

Ernest Hemingway lived at this Spanish Colonial-style house on a lush tropical estate for about 10 years.

Paul Harris/Getty Images

Ernest Hemingway Home and Museum, Key West, Florida

This Spanish Colonial-style house on a lush tropical estate is where Ernest Hemingway lived for about 10 years and wrote To Have and Have Not, about Key West. He lived here with his second wife, Pauline, a former Vogue editor he met in Paris, whose uncle bought the house for the newlyweds. In the Hemingway Home, you can see his studio, trophies from his African safaris and photos of his sport fishing in Cuba and the Bahamas, as well as a swimming pool, Key West’s first in-ground pool. Many cats roam the estate, which may or may not be descended from the writer’s six-toed pet cat.

Cost: $18.

Poet Robinson Jeffers built the cottage, right, with a contractor, but built Hawk Tower, at left, alone.

Courtesy Tor House Foundation

Tor House, Carmel, California

This small stone cottage and four-story stone tower, located on a promontory on California’s Central Coast, was the home of poet Robinson Jeffers from 1919-1962. A docent recites or reads Jeffers’ poems during the tour, many inspired by the grandeur of nature in this region, specific rooms and his beloved dog, whose grave is on the grounds (“You were never masters, but always friends.”). Jeffers built the cottage with a contractor, but built Hawk Tower alone, inspired by stone towers in rural Ireland, hauling granite boulders from the shore with a plane and pulley system. Tor House is filled with treasures friends brought back from their travels such as pre-Colombian terracotta heads from Mexico, a carved stone head from Angkor Wat in Cambodia, a fragment from a pyramid in Egypt and six medieval “Lady and the Unicorn” tapestry replicas. You can climb inside the tower through a hidden stairway, where the motto of Roman poet Virgil is inscribed in Latin over a fireplace (“They make their own dreams for themselves”), or through outdoor stairs. Writers Edna St. Vincent Millay, Sinclair Lewis and Dylan Thomas were visitors to the home. The home is located a few blocks from Carmel-by-the-Sea, an art and writers’ colony in the early 20th century that today has about 80 galleries. Concerts and talks are also presented at the house.

Cost: $15.

Heyward-Washington House, named for Thomas Heyward Jr. who fought in the American Revolution, features Colonial-era wooden furniture.

Courtesy of the Charleston Museum

Heyward-Washington House, Charleston, South Carolina

This brick Georgian-style house, built in 1772, was the home of Thomas Heyward Jr., who fought in the American Revolution. Heyward was one of South Carolina’s four signers of the Declaration of Independence. When George Washington was president, he stayed here for a week during his 1791 visit to the city. Charleston’s first house museum also was home to two heroines of the anti-slavery and women’s rights movements, Angelina and Sarah Grimke, the daughters of a wealthy planter. In defiance of the law, Sarah secretly taught her young, enslaved girl to read and write. After her father found out, he severely punished them. The sisters moved to Philadelphia and became Quakers. Angelina became the first woman to address lawmakers in the U.S. in a speech to the Massachusetts state legislature about abolitionism and women’s rights in 1838 (women won the right to vote nationwide in 1920).

The Heyward-Washington House has fine examples of Colonial-era Charleston-made wooden furniture, such as the mahogany Holmes library bookcase, and 18th-century Chinese export porcelain depicting pomegranates and hibiscus in a rare magenta-and-lime-green color scheme. The kitchen house in the backyard, where enslaved people also lived, is the city’s last surviving example of a 1740s era kitchen building. Other items from the house, such as blue-and-white Chinese porcelain and archeological artifacts like stemmed glasses and porcelain fragments, are in the Charleston Museum.

Cost: $15.

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Sharon McDonnell is a travel, culture and food/drink writer in San Francisco. She’s written for Food & Wine, Conde Nast Traveler, Architectural Digest, Next Avenue, Travel & Leisure, Fodor’s Travel plus university magazines for Princeton, Bryn Mawr, University of Washington, University of Michigan and Southern Connecticut State University, among many others.