Joining us for this Three-fer Friday trip through America’s historic homes is Caroline Tiger, a Philadelphia-based freelance writer who writes about quite the wide range of topics but really loves writing about design, France, and Philadelphia. Do yourself a favor and give her super stylish blog, design-phan, a read.

The slightly overstated droop in its roof and deliberately exaggerated tapering of its sandstone walls give the structure a cartoonish look. Photo by barnyardbbs via Flickr (Creative Commons license).

The Wharton Esherick Museum on a forested hilltop in Valley Forge, PA, resembles a fairytale cottage. Esherick, a pioneer of the Studio Furniture movement, thought buildings should appear to grow from their surroundings.  His walls taper like trees.

Every beam, shelf, and piece of sculpture–gleaming from years and layers of boiled linseed oil–was crafted by Esherick while he lived and worked here from the 1920s till his death in 1970. The man had a sense of humor. A docent told me the sculpture of a young woman sheepishly covering her crotch (“Adolescence”) immortalizes his daughter’s embarrassment over her parents’clothing-optional lifestyle. His kids, who turned their father’s home into a museum, left everything as it was. A dogeared copy of Walden still occupies the bookshelf over his bed.–Caroline Tiger

Imagine yourself here. Photo by Sophia Dembling.

How do I choose a favorite? The glorious mansions of Newport, Rhode Island? New York’s Tenement Museum, where my great-uncle Sam Jaffe was born? (Cool, right?) Or back to Oklahoma and the Selman Guest Ranch, where I had breakfast one day last year. The cozy 1920s ranch house, set on 14,000 spectacular acres is filled with unpretentious memorabilia from 100 years of Selman ranchers (Sue Selman and her progeny currently run it). It is among the most evocative houses I’ve ever visited, redolent of Oklahoma history as lived by one family. I wandered the rooms while breakfast sizzled fragrantly on the griddle and snapshots from an imagined past flitted through my mind.–Sophia

One of the Biltmore's 43 bathrooms. Photo courtesty of southerntabitha via Flickr (Creative Commons license).

OK, so it stretches the definition of “house” a bit. But, two years after my visit to Asheville, North Carolina’s Biltmore Estate for Land Rover Experience Driving School, I’m still daydreaming of the parties (some elegant, others raucous) I would love to throw there. As I passed through a few dozen of the house’s 250 rooms, it was easy to picture groups of friends gathered in the library (stocked with 10,000 books), throwing strikes in the bowling alley, or drinking it up in the basement room that Cornelia Vanderbilt and friends painted with crazy murals during their own party. Though, as far as houses go, the Biltmore is planted firmly at massive–it’s America’s largest private home–it felt surprisingly cozy. And, oh, that library.–Jenna

Joining us today is our buddy Rob Verger, who once spent 24 hours in Kennedy Airport for a story. We met Rob when we were all blogging for World Hum, where he still contributes articles and slide shows. Rob also has chatted up Buzz Aldrin and Malcolm Gladwell for Boston Globe articles, and he has taught undergraduate writing at Columbia University.

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PhD theses could be written about contradictions like this souvenir Eskimo knife: “The Packaging of the Idea of the Authentic.” Photo by Rob Verger.

When I was young, my family and I took a trip to Alaska organized by Princess Cruises: it involved a train, a cruise that edged up to glaciers, and stops at touristy places designed to capture the frontier experience. I still have a souvenir from that trip: an ulu knife, the traditional knife of the Eskimos. I must have gotten it on the train. The funny thing about it is that it’s a replica of a practical device—an “authentic” tool of the Eskimos—packaged for tourists. PhD theses have probably been written about such contradictions. But I don’t care. It’s a cool, cheesy souvenir, and when I was a kid I was in love with the idea of Alaska that was captured by the knife. Actually, I’m still in love with the idea of Alaska. –Rob

Waiting for Old Faithful. NPS photo by Ed Austin & Herb Jones; 1987.

As I’ve mentioned before, I’ve brought more than a few things home from trips. But if you happen to pass through a gift shop at Yellowstone in the near future, could you pick up Old Faithful salt-and-pepper shakers for me? I’m still mourning the loss of the pair my stupid ex broke. While I wouldn’t mind owning this nifty antique set, the ones I REALLY want are the hokey cartoony ones that make the geyser blast look like a big white mushroom. Sadly, the Yellowstone General Store does not sell them on their site. They should swap them into the spot now occupied by the bear wine caddy. That thing is hideous.–Jenna

My favored souvenir these days is a patriotic mug from wonderful Woodward Oklahoma.

I’m pragmatic. I’m not big on stuff that just sits around looking cute. I like my tsotskes to work for me, to serve a purpose. Refrigerator magnets. Tote bags. Dish towels. Right now, I’m into mugs. Among my souvenirs is a “Votes for Women” mug from Newport, RI and a Veselka mug from the old country, NYC’s East Village. My current favorite is “America at Its Best” from Woodward, OK. It’s got flag-waving children and everything. Unlike bric-a-brac that sit behind glass, practical souvenirs are transient. Towels wear out, mugs break. I’m always sad when that happens. Then I buy new ones on new trips.–Sophia

Scare you? No? Well, we’ve got a few other tricks and travel treats bubbling away in this week’s Three-fer Friday cauldron. Here, some places and experiences that left us with chills (still multiplying). Happy Halloween!

We’re joined by one of our most frightening–and we mean that in a good way–friends. Hilary Davidson, a very nice and kind person who writes about travel and gluten-free dining around the globe, also happens to pen some of the most unsettling short stories you’ll ever read. Her debut crime novel, The Damage Done, will be published by Forge in October 2010.

Photo by Hilary Davidson

Before visiting Newport’s famous Gilded Age mansions, I got acquainted with its graves at the Common Burial Ground and the Island Cemetery, adjoining but separate final resting places. Some of the headstones and markers are illegible, not surprising given that the Common Burial Ground dates back to the 1600s. It includes a colonial-era slave cemetery and a sequestered plot of Jewish graves. The Island Cemetery holds the remains of many of the area’s notable families. It’s a gated community of death: a private cemetery that has welcomed the wealthy for two centuries. There are other cemeteries in Newport, but none so clearly illustrates the separation between the classes. What haunts me is the idea that even in death, some people hold to a faith in a velvet rope.–Hilary

I don’t do scary stuff because I’m a weenie and I get scared. So the spookiest thing I have to offer here is photos of some of the creepy mannequins I’ve encountered at small museums. I love little offbeat museums but sometimes they’re like going through a haunted house for me—I turn a corner and EEK! a scary mannequin! Sometimes they’re dusty, sometimes they’re off-balance, sometimes they’re missing appendages or have rotten bits. Sometimes they’re just … creepy. Where do they get those things? Halloween stores? (For the record, Texas Prison Museum in Huntsville, Texas; Greater Southwest Historical Museum in Ardmore, Oklahoma; and Geronimo Springs Museum in Truth or Consequences, New Mexico.)–Sophia

1880 Newbury House

After a day scouring tables along the World’s Longest Yard Sale, I settled in for the night at Historic Rugby, Tennessee’s Newbury House Bed and Breakfast. Built in 1880, it was the first boarding house in the Utopian community founded by Thomas Hughes, author of Tom Brown’s Schooldays. On my bedside table: a thick anthology of ghost tales and a ledger filled with past guests’ stories of haunting encounters experienced in my austere but comfortable room. That night, after all the other guests were clearly asleep, the hallway remained busy. The light through the crack under my door flickered as people, silently, paced the hallway. For the rest of the night, I slept with the bathroom light on.–Jenna

What Cornish left behind. Photo by Jenna Schnuer.

Ruins thrill me. Especially when they’re just…there. When they’re free of guided tours, other people, and too much information. I like to wander decaying exteriors and see how nature has started to claim them for its own. To see trees and plants growing where people once danced or ate dinner. I like to see sunlight filling every hole in the roof or, even better, a full blue sky replacement roof

But, in the past, ruins have always felt more a part of trips abroad. It’s an age thing: for me, the U.S. still feels too new to really have ruins. House tours in the U.S.? Yes, of course. From Newport to San Simeon, we’re a country that loves to celebrate elegant and/or historic homes from days long gone. I love those homes, too, but they don’t send my imagination swirling in the way that a good pile of stone does. The barely standing frame of a house? It’s my bliss.

Delaying the end of the hike. Photo by Jenna Schnuer.

Last Thursday, I found some local bliss. After a commuter rail trip along the Hudson, I went hiking in Hudson Highlands State Park. Though I’d been to Cold Spring, one of the towns it borders, many times throughout my life, I hadn’t ever hiked the park. It’s tempting to smack myself for that but I do love that, even close to home, there are always new discoveries to make. Besides, Thursday’s hike was a birthday outing with my friend K and what we found there was the best birthday gift I could have stumbled across.

The writeups I’d scanned about the hike mentioned that it featured the remains of the long-abandoned estate of industrialist Edward G. Cornish. It registered but, and this isn’t totally odd for me, I was also a little too focused on the pre-trip details of when to go, what to wear, blah blah blah. Once on the trail, the ruins started to appear pretty quickly: a stone exterior here, a pool filled with mud and rainwater there. I was glad I hadn’t read too much. For a while, these ruins were mine to rebuild in my imagination. And, now that I’m back home, I have plenty of time to read up on what really went on inside their doors–and turn my attention to new ruin-finding outings around the U.S.