Historic House Museums

A house whose primary present-day function is a museum open to the public, operated specifically to document the life of a notable former occupant, an architectural style or movement, or a period of domestic history, rather than a house that happens to be old but continues in private or unrelated institutional use. This group gathers residential buildings whose own recorded building type states a museum function directly, distinguishing them from a historic house that is simply historic and from a working plantation house, manor or country house preserved for a broader estate or dynastic significance rather than a museum program built around the house itself.