HearstCastle

Hearst's San Simeon: The Gardens & Land

In a recent Classicist column on magnates and their mansions we discussed the famed Hearst Castle at San Simeon, one of the most lavish private residences ever constructed. Now in a beautiful new book due out May 1, Victoria Kastner focuses on the equally impressive estate itself, which encompasses 120 acres of luxuriant gardens and 450 square miles of pristine coastland, that belonged to William Randolph Hearst.

In Hearst's San Simeon: The Gardens and the Land, Kastner, Hearst Castle's historian, draws on many anecdotes from famous visitors - Hollywood celebrities, literary figures, and politicians flocked there - and examines the varied artistic influences contributing to San Simeon's design and the recent efforts that preserved its surrounding land from commercial development. It features Victoria Garagliano's stunning color photographs, plus historic images and original drawings.

The book (above) is available for pre-order on Amazon.

Tags: California, garden, Hearst Castle, HearstCastle, mansion, San Simeon, SanSimeon, william randolph hearst, WilliamRandolphHearst

The Classicist: Magnates, Mansions & Millionaires

by Jared Paul Stern (RSS feed) —

Filed under: Estates, Books, The Classicist, Wealth

The excesses of today's tycoons have come under lots of scrutiny lately due to the dire financial situation. Titans of business have always been at the forefront of American mythology however, in both good times and bad, and it's worth putting today's crop of nabobs in their proper historical context. That's what William G. Scheller has done admirably in his new book, Great Estates: The Lifestyles & Homes of American Magnates (Universe, $35). The oversized, lavishly illustrated volume celebrates the history of 40 of America's true barons of business, from the 1700s through this year's Forbes list, and opens the door into their private palaces along the way.

Beginning with the colonial era, when trade was overtaking landholding as a way to get rich, Great Estates follows the "restless careers of our most brilliant and driven merchants, industrialists, and financiers as they mastered a new economic world of textiles, railroads, oil, and steel." With the twentieth century came fresh opportunities: "automobiles, motion pictures, broadcasting, publishing, and retailing on a massive scale, and the vast horizon of high technology." And of course the massive mansions that men of great fortune erected as monuments to their success along the way.

These include Henry Clay Frick's Manhattan mansion, now a magnificent museum; William Randolph Hearst's San Simeon in California, aka Hearst Castle; and one of our personal favorites, railroad magnate Jay Gould's gothic castle on the Hudson River, Lyndhurst (pictured above on the book's cover). Shortly after he purchased the estate as a summer home in 1880, Gould was at the zenith of his power, having gained control of Western Union Telegraph, the New York Elevated Railway and the Union Pacific Railroad with rapacious methods that once caused him to be beaten by a Wall Street mob.

Gallery: Magnates' Great Estates

Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum (former Carnegie Mansion)

Tags: Astor, Bill Gates, BillGates, Frick Collection, FrickCollection, Hearst Castle, HearstCastle, Henry Clay Frick, HenryClayFrick, Jay Gould, JayGould, Lyndhurst, Mansion, Rockefeller, San Simeon, SanSimeon, Tycoon, Vanderbilt, Warren Buffett, WarrenBuffett, William Randolph Hearst, WilliamRandolphHearst

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Forbes Ranks World's Most Expensive Fictional Houses

by Jared Paul Stern (RSS feed) —

Filed under: Estates

The fellows at Forbes must be feeling a little light-headed. The magazine just came out with its first ever ranking of the most expensive houses in the world - that don't actually exist. Well, it's fun anyway. First they laid out a few ground rules: 1. "All the properties had to be primarily residences (no schools, evil lairs or Death Stars) and we excluded castles (sorry Cinderella, Dracula). 2. "In the interest of variety, we limited our selections to no more than one or two of a 'type.'" 3. "We eliminated any selections that were deemed too obscure." Other than that, the properties in question could come from everything from comic books to TV shows to movies and videogames.

The most expensive fictional house, according to Forbes, is Xanadu, the home of newspaper baron Charles Foster Kane in Citizen Kane, at $160 million. The house is modeled on Hearst Castle (above), the real life San Simeon, Calif., estate of media mogul William Randolph Hearst. In the #2 spot is Richie Rich's cartoon mansion, complete with diamond-walled swimming pool, at $135 million. Elsewhere on the list: Tony Stark's bachelor pad in Iron Man, at $50.8 million; Gone With the Wind's antebellum plantation Tara, at $17.2 million; Croft Manor from Tomb Raider, at $46.1 million; and Jay Gatsby's Long Island mansion from The Great Gatsby, $42.5 million. Click here for a slideshow.