Nemours: A Portrait of Alfred I. duPont's Home

One of America’s greatest houses, the unequaled home of Gilded Age philanthropist Alfred I. duPont, has been newly restored to national acclaim. Nemours Mansion and Gardens is the 222-acre estate and onetime home of Alfred I. duPont-photographer, manufacturer, musician, politician, banker, inventor, suffragist, newspaper owner, businessman, and philanthropist. Designed and built in the Louis XIV style in 1909 by Carrere and Hastings, it is one of the largest and most opulent houses in America, to be compared only with the likes of the Biltmore Estate, the White House, The Breakers, and Hearst Castle. With seventy rooms spread out over 46,000 square feet, it is capacious, yet an intimacy of detail and graciousness of proportion give the visitor a feeling of serenity and a special sense of place that is unique to Nemours. Newly and painstakingly renovated, the house-now a museum that can be toured-glows with the finish of its original splendor, captured at long last in a volume that sumptuously reflects the magnificence of a masterpiece.   

 Dwight Young is a senior communications associate for the National Trust for Historic Preservation in Washington, D.C. Sisse Brimberg has been a regular photographer for National Geographic magazine since 1976. Cotton Coulson has worked as a photographer for National Geographic, was associate director of photography at US News and World Report, and has served as senior vice president of C-NET in San Francisco. Grace Gary is executive director of Nemours Mansion and Gardens.