10 Beautiful Historic Mansions To Visit In The Midwest Mar.17.2021 Once the homes of land barons, bankers, railroad tycoons, and shipping magnates, giant mansions would often stand tall on bluffs and hills, overlooking towns across the Midwest, much like a king looking down on his fiefdom. With wings set aside for family members, entertaining, or other reasons, mansions showed the rest of the world how wealthy you were. Today, several mansions from the late 19th and early 20th centuries are museums of sorts, telling the stories of the families and their impacts on their communities. Through our travels, both hosted and on our own, my wife and I have visited several mansions because we enjoy learning the backstory, as well as local history. The mansions I selected for this article are ones that really stood out to me, and show similarities and differences of communities across the region.