The Largest House in America… & 99 More Mansions
What’s better than a resort feel combined with the comfort of a home? While not the biggest house in the world, no lavishness was spared during the construction of 100 of the biggest houses in the U.S. The massiveness of these mansions is based on the square footage of the main house (you read that right, some of these properties have multiple houses).
Still standing or not, these homes are worth remembering. And when it comes to 100 of the largest homes in the country, inquisitive minds want to know about the 10 biggest of 80,000 square feet or above. As for where most of these massive homes are located and who they were built for? Go window shopping for this information and more on the map below.
View Largest houses in the U.S. in a full screen map
According to Wikipedia’s list, these are the 100 largest houses in the United States. We mapped them in seconds via our online mapping tool, enabling us (and you!) to sort by the additional data like square footage, year completed, who the home was built for, architectural style, and the owner and architect. Let’s jump into what we can learn from our mapped data.
Biggest of Already Big Houses
The 100 houses on the map range in size from 39,648 to 178,926 square feet. But the biggest of these already big homes? They’re all 80,000 square feet or above.
- Biltmore Estate
- Oheka Castle
- Whitemarsh Hall
- Arden House
- Winterthur
- Shadow Lawn (tied with Cornelius Vanderbilt II House)
- Cornelius Vanderbilt II House (tied with Shadow Lawn)
- Meadow Brook Hall
- Versailles
- Florham (tied with Harbor Hill)
- Harbor Hill (tied with Florham)
Of the largest U.S. houses, Biltmore Estate is #1. This Asheville, North Carolina residence sprawls across 178,926 square feet and was built in 1895 for George Washington Vanderbilt II. The second-largest home in the U.S. also happens to be the last one above 100,000 square feet. It’s the West Hills, New York Oheka Castle, also known as the Otto Kahn Estate (109,000 square feet).
As for Wyndmoor, Pennsylvania’s Whitemarsh Hall, it added up to exactly 100,000 square feet before it was torn down in 1980. Additionally, Arden House takes up 97,188 square feet while Winterthur resides on 96,582. Both West Long Branch, New Jersey’s Shadow Lawn and N.Y.C.’s Cornelius Vanderbilt II House weighed in at 90,000 square feet, though the Vanderbilt home was demolished in 1926. Meadow Brook Hall in Rochester Hills, Michigan sits atop 88,000 square feet.
And while not the actual palace, Versailles comes pretty close at 85,000 square feet in Windermere, Florida. This leaves Florham in Florham Park, New Jersey and Harbor Hill in Roslyn, New York to tie with 80,000 square feet. And even though Harbor Hill was demolished in 1947, these two homes are representative of where most of the hundred are located.
A Large Number of Large Homes Are Here
You’ll find pins representing these 100 large homes all across the country. However, most are located in the Eastern states of New York, New Jersey, or Pennsylvania.
City-wise, six are—or were—in New York City alone. This includes the Cornelius Vanderbilt II House (demolished in 1926), Andrew Carnegie Mansion, Felix M. Warburg House, Otto H. Kahn House, Riverside (demolished in 1948), and Henry Clay Frick House.
On the other side of the country, The Manor, The Pritzker Estate, 457 Bel Air Road, Château des Fleurs, and 10697 Somma Way are all located in Los Angeles. Then there’s the White House, one of five tens-of-thousands square feet homes in Washington D.C.
Additional estates in the capital city include Dumbarton Oaks, the Perry Belmont House, Townsend House, and Anderson House. Three mansions can also be found in Palm Beach, Florida along with Newport, Rhode Island, but let’s see what other insights can be illuminated from the map.
Who Were These Huge Homes Built For?
More than the biggest or the cities home to quite a few, it’s notable that nine of the people these houses were built for are named William (including one of six Vanderbilts). Even more, the following folks had two of these large homes built for them:
- Alfred I. du Pont
- Cornelius Vanderbilt II
- Edward T. Stotesbury
- George Crocker
- Otto Hermann Kahn
Of the five, you may most easily recognize Cornelius Vanderbilt II thanks to his connection to the famous family (and that his namesake home was one of the 10 largest and located, among five others, in the Big Apple). This particular Vanderbilt became the Chairman and President of the New York Central and related railroad lines after his father in 1885. In addition to being the goal of the sixth-largest home in the U.S., the Cornelius Vanderbilt II House, The Breakers, a 62,482 square foot home, was also built for him in Newport, Rhode Island.
As for the other four names, Alfred Irénée du Pont was an industrialist, financier, philanthropist, and member of the influential du Pont family until his death in 1935. His two houses included the 65th largest, dubbed Nemours in Wilmington, Delaware and #88 NYIT de Seversky Mansion in New York. Interestingly, family member Henry Francis du Pont was the architect of the fifth-largest home, Winterthur. And prominent investment banker Edward T. Stotesbury owned the previously mentioned third-largest home in the country: Whitemarsh Hall. That along with El Mirasol (60,000 square feet) were his.
George Crocker, the second vice president of the Southern Pacific Railroad, had both the Crocker-McMillin Mansion (50,000 square feet) and Darlington (45,000 square feet) built for him in Mahwah, New Jersey. As for Otto Hermann Kahn, the man was a German-born American investment banker, collector, philanthropist, and patron of the arts with the second largest home in America: Oheka Castle along with the Otto H. Kahn House (50,316 square feet).
Architectural Style, Owner, Architect & More
You can also sort the map by the 30+ different architectural styles of these homes—and it’s clear Châteauesque is the most popular. Do the same with the owners of these homes or the brilliant architects like Carrère and Hastings (who had a hand in at least eight of these homes) and Horace Trumbauer (the architect of seven). Get to grouping your additional data like this now with BatchGeo. Or, if you’re in the market for the biggest house in the world, learn how to make an open house map. Or if you’re not quite there yet, apartment hunt visually with a custom map.
