In the rolling hills outside Rougemont, North Carolina, a castle rises from the trees like something out of a fairytale. Its red turrets and gothic arches catch the light in strange, romantic ways, and from a distance it seems as if it might be centuries old, brought over stone by stone from some European hillside. In truth, this is Castle Mont Rouge , and its story belongs entirely to North Carolina. The castle was the vision of sculptor Robert Mihaly, who set out to create

Tucked into a quiet, wooded lot in Jackson, Mississippi, Fountainhead  doesn’t rise. It settles —low and horizontal, hugging the earth as if grown there, not built. Designed by Frank Lloyd Wright and completed between 1950 and 1954, this Usonian masterpiece was more than a home—it was a philosophy in wood, glass, and brick. From the outside, it might look modest. But step inside, and the genius unfolds. Wright designed Fountainhead as a two-bedroom, two-bathroom residence, wi

Tucked beneath a canopy of old oaks on a quiet street in Oak Park, Illinois, stands a house that helped shape one of America’s greatest literary voices. The Ernest Hemingway Birthplace wasn’t built to be a monument. It began, simply, as a home—a graceful Queen Anne built in 1890, filled with the sounds of piano music, dinner conversation, and the rhythm of daily life. It was here, in a second-floor bedroom at 339 N. Oak Park Avenue, that Ernest Miller Hemingway was born in 18

High above the busy streets of Manhattan’s West Village, at 719 Greenwich Street, a secret world blooms where no one expects it. From the sidewalk below, the brick loft building looks like so many others in the neighborhood. But if you lift your gaze to the rooftop, you’ll find something whimsical and entirely out of place: a rustic wooden cabin, perched among a patch of meadow grasses, as though a piece of the countryside had drifted down and landed on the city. The cottage

In the rolling hills outside Hyrum, Utah, the Lazy R Ranch rises like something out of a storybook—but on a scale few storybooks could capture. At more than 40,000 square feet, it is the largest single-family residence in the state, a property that combines the grandeur of a mountain lodge with the imagination of a theme park. From the outside, the ranch carries the look of a western retreat: log beams, massive stonework, and broad verandas that stretch toward views of the su

Perched high on a cliff above the waters of Lake Erie, the Benson Ford Shiphouse looks at first like a freighter frozen in motion, stranded far from the harbor. From the shoreline below, you can see the steel bow jutting proudly toward the horizon, its riveted sides and porthole windows looking ready to set sail. But instead of churning through waves, this ship now overlooks them—a home with a story as unusual as any vessel’s voyage. The ship began life in 1924 as the Benson