Nashville
From orphaned and virtually penniless at age 14 to the seventh president of the United States by age 62, Andrew Jackson lived an extraordinary life. His home, known as Andrew Jackson’s Hermitage, draws people not just as a National Historic Landmark but also as a window into the former president’s headstrong character.
Today, the well-visited home is one of Nashville’s top-rated attractions, alongside other intriguing antebellum homes. Groups can wander amid the 1,120-acre site’s 30 historic buildings, take a seasonal wagon tour and explore walking trails and manicured gardens. Staff keep the home preserved much the way Jackson arranged it. After a peek into his home life, guests can learn more about this fiery leader at the exhibit “Andrew Jackson: Born for a Storm,” which chronicles his life with videos and artifacts.
Interesting stories also keep guests captivated at Nashville’s Belle Meade Plantation. First built as a simple log cabin, the property is a Greek Revival mansion on one of the largest private estates in the city, at 5,400 acres. Visitors can explore the remaining 30 acres past the original cabin, a slave cabin and an 1892 carriage house containing an extensive carriage collection.
Tours reveal how Belle Meade’s owners dabbled in many endeavors, including a cotton gin, a grist mill and thoroughbred racing. Costumed guides lead groups through the plantation’s 1845 mansion.
Other historic homes with entertaining stories to tell are Belmont Mansion, an Italian villa from 1853, and Cheekwood Mansion, an American Country Place estate built by the owners of the Maxwell House beverage company.
Richmond, Virginia
Business boomed in Richmond, Virginia, for so long that over the years, wealthy townspeople called upon notable architects to construct their mansions. Tours of the town highlight Richmond’s architectural treasures, with examples of Georgian, Federal, Greek Revival, Queen Anne and other design styles.
Not everyone associates the city with New Orleans, but many of the historic parts of town resemble the Louisiana city, with its prominent use of cast-iron architecture. Historic canal cruises, trolley tours and Segway tours point out the architecturally significant homes in the town and the broader history behind them.
For a closer look at a historic Richmond home, groups can tour Maymont Mansion, on the banks of the James River. With a design that interweaves elements of the Romanesque Revival and Queen Anne styles, the 12,000-square-foot home became a well-preserved monument to the Gilded Age lifestyle due to its early designation as a museum in 1925. Groups can tour the upper rooms and in the basement browse exhibits that illustrate the interplay between the working and wealthy classes.
Though Richmond was incorporated in 1742, the Agnes Hall and Gardens’ story reaches much further back, since the Tudor mansion came to Virginia in pieces from Manchester, England. The 500-year-old manor home illustrates the lives of the landed gentry in England’s Tudor and Stuart periods, as well as the Roaring ’20s, since the house completed its move in the few months before the stock market crash of 1929.
