Ohio’s Gilded Age: 9 Mansions and Estates You Can Actually Tour

HBO’s The Gilded Age comes back for season four on Sunday, November 1, and if the show has you craving ballrooms, chandeliers, opera boxes and old-money feuds, Ohio can deliver the real thing.

The state’s industrialists of the 1870s through the 1910s built country manors and Carnegie-funded libraries that hold up next to anything on screen, minus the scripted scandals. Most of these houses still open their doors, so you can walk the same halls and staircases the original owners showed off to their guests. Addresses, hours and ticket prices below come from each site’s own pages and are worth a second look before you drive, since several of these run on seasonal or appointment-only schedules.

Stan Hywet Hall & Gardens – Akron

Stan Hywet Hall & Gardens is the 65-room Tudor Revival manor Goodyear co-founder F.A. Seiberling built between 1912 and 1915, after touring about 20 English manor houses for ideas. The house runs to 64,500 square feet on four floors, and the grounds spread from the walled English Garden to the Japanese Garden. This is the closest thing Ohio has to a Newport cottage, and it’s the one stop on this list that fills a whole day.

Visitor Tips:

• Address: 714 North Portage Path, Akron
• Hours: Tuesday through Sunday, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., with last admission at 5 p.m., April 1 through November 25. Closed December 31 through March 31; the Deck the Hall holiday evenings run on select dates from late November.
• Don’t miss: The English Garden, the walled garden Ellen Biddle Shipman redesigned in 1929.
• Tickets: Self-guided Manor House $19 adults, $9 ages 3 to 17; guided tour $21 and $10. Gardens only is $15. Seniors 60 and up get half off on Tuesdays only.
• Website: stanhywet.org

Hower House Museum – Akron

John Henry Hower made his money in milling and reapers and finished this 28-room Second Empire house in 1871, mansard roof and tower included. It’s the earliest house on this list and the one that looks most like the New York townhouses on the show. The University of Akron owns it and runs it as a museum with a volunteer guild, so tours are self-guided and the hours are short. The museum decorates for the holidays, and that season opens November 5.

Visitor Tips:

• Address: 60 Fir Hill, Akron (University of Akron campus)
• Hours: Thursday through Saturday, noon to 3 p.m., last tour at 2 p.m. Closed in January and on major holidays.
• Don’t miss: The tower and the mansard roofline from Fir Hill.
• Tickets: $10 adults, $8 seniors, $2 students, free for ages 6 and under.
• Website: uakron.edu/howerhousemuseum

Hay-McKinney Mansion at the Cleveland History Center – Cleveland

Clara Stone Hay, daughter of railroad magnate Amasa Stone and widow of diplomat John Hay, hired Abram Garfield, the president’s youngest son, to design this Renaissance Revival house in 1908. It was finished in 1911 and she never moved in; she stayed in Washington after her sister died. Steel magnate Price McKinney bought it next, and the Western Reserve Historical Society has run it as a furnished period house since 1938. It’s under the same roof as the Crawford Auto-Aviation Museum, so one ticket covers the mansion and the cars.

Visitor Tips:

• Address: 10825 East Boulevard, Cleveland (University Circle)
• Hours: Thursday noon to 8 p.m., Friday through Sunday 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Closed Monday through Wednesday.
• Don’t miss: The furnished period rooms upstairs and the Crawford’s car galleries next door.
• Tickets: $15 adults, $13 seniors, $10 students and ages 3 to 17. One ticket covers every gallery at the History Center.
• Website: wrhs.org

Glidden House – Cleveland

Frank and Mary Glidden of the paint family built this red-brick French Gothic house in 1910, a block off Millionaires’ Row in University Circle. It’s a boutique hotel now, which makes it a Gilded Age house in Cleveland you can actually sleep in. Ask for a room in the original mansion rather than the newer wing.

Visitor Tips:

• Address: 1901 Ford Drive, Cleveland
• Hours: Hotel, so overnight guests only. Non-guests can see the exterior and the lobby.
• Don’t miss: The complimentary breakfast served in the mansion’s ground-floor rooms, and the hotel’s self-guided art tour.
• Website: gliddenhouse.com

Five Oaks – Massillon

The McClymonds family hired Charles Schweinfurth, the Cleveland architect who later built the Mather Mansion on Euclid Avenue, and got this stone house in 1894. Tiffany glass, gold leaf on the walls and carved woodwork survive because the McClymonds daughters gave the house to the Massillon Woman’s Club in 1924, and it has been the clubhouse ever since. It’s a working clubhouse, so you tour by arrangement and the rooms still hold the club’s own furniture.

Visitor Tips:

• Address: 210 Fourth Street NE, Massillon
• Hours: Tours by appointment through the club (330-833-4896) or the Massillon Heritage Foundation (330-737-1106). The club office is open weekdays except Thursday.
• Don’t miss: The Tiffany glass.
• Website: massillonwomansclub.weebly.com

GreatStone Castle (Whitby Mansion) – Sidney

W.H.C. Goode, who made his money in steel scrapers, finished this limestone pile in 1890 and named it Whitby after the Yorkshire town. The walls are 18 inches thick, three turrets break the roofline, and the interior woodwork came by ship and rail from many countries. It runs as a bed and breakfast with a spa today, so the cheapest way to see the parlor and ballroom is to book a room. Sidney is about 80 miles northwest of Columbus, which makes this the easiest overnight on the list, and it also made the cut in our roundup of real castles in Ohio.

Visitor Tips:

• Address: 429 North Ohio Avenue, Sidney
• Hours: Overnight guests, plus guided tours by appointment. Call 937-498-4728.
• Don’t miss: The carved hardwood in the parlor and the view of downtown Sidney from the porch swing.
• Website: greatstonecastle.com

Columbus Main Library – Columbus

Andrew Carnegie put up $200,000 for this one, and the city dedicated it on April 4, 1907. Albert Randolph Ross designed it in white Vermont marble in the Beaux-Arts style, and the 1907 building survived every expansion since: the 2016 renovation wrapped the original west facade inside a glass atrium, so you now look at the old marble front from indoors. The corridors keep their coffered ceilings and dark green scagliola columns, imitation marble done well enough that most visitors never notice.

Visitor Tips:

• Address: 96 South Grant Avenue, Columbus
• Hours: Check columbuslibrary.org for the current hours before a Sunday trip.
• Don’t miss: The old west facade seen from inside the Grand Atrium, and the Carnegie inscription over the original entrance.
• Admission: Free
• Website: columbuslibrary.org

Laurel Court – Cincinnati

Peter G. Thomson, who founded Champion Coated Paper, spent 1902 to 1907 building this Beaux-Arts house on the highest ground in Hamilton County. His wife’s nephew, James Gamble Rogers, later the architect of much of Yale, modeled it on the Trianon at Versailles: 36 rooms, close to 20,000 square feet, a staircase shipped from Europe and a music room finished in gold. It’s privately owned, so tours run on scheduled dates rather than daily and the rooms still look lived in.

Visitor Tips:

• Address: 5870 Belmont Avenue, Cincinnati (College Hill). Parking entrance is on Oakwood Avenue.
• Hours: One-hour guided tours on scheduled dates only; the calendar updates monthly. Book online or pay at the door.
• Don’t miss: The gold music room and the view from the terrace.
• Tickets: $12 adults, $6 ages 6 to 17, cash or check at the door.
• Website: laurelcourt.com

Hawthorn Hill – Oakwood

Orville Wright moved into this white-columned Classical Revival house in 1914 with his sister Katharine and their father, and lived there until he died in 1948. Wilbur helped design it but died of typhoid two years before it was finished. Charles Lindbergh was a houseguest. Dayton History runs it as a house museum. It sits in a residential neighborhood, so you can’t just show up: tours leave by shuttle van from Carillon Historical Park twice a day on two days a week, and they fill up.

Visitor Tips:

• Address: 901 Harman Avenue, Oakwood. Tours depart from Carillon Historical Park, 1000 Carillon Boulevard, Dayton.
• Hours: Wednesdays and Saturdays at 10 a.m. and 12:30 p.m., advance purchase required.
• Don’t miss: Orville’s study, the one room kept close to how he left it.
• Tickets: $16, or $26 combined with Carillon Historical Park.
• Website: daytonhistory.org

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