The Elms
Formal gardens, French-inspired rooms, rooftop views, and a remarkable below-stairs tour expose both display and domestic infrastructure.
Artwork inspired by Sydney Richmond Burleigh
Horace Trumbauer designed The Elms for coal magnate Edward Berwind, drawing on an eighteenth-century French château. Its symmetrical interiors and gardens are controlled performances, but basement tunnels, laundry, kitchens, and staff spaces reveal the systems and people that sustained them.
Standard admission does not automatically include the Servant Life or rooftop tour. Decide which layer matters most before booking, and save garden time for after the interior. Rooftop and behind-the-scenes routes involve extra stairs and weather exposure. A complete route makes luxury upstairs inseparable from heat, laundry, food, and communication systems below. Garden geometry then extends that controlled order beyond the walls.
- Completed
- 1901
- Architect
- Horace Trumbauer
- Landscape
- Formal sunken garden
Quick guide
- Read symmetry
- Notice how sightlines control the main floor.
- Go below stairs
- Book separately if service history matters.
Know before you go
- Read symmetry
- Notice how sightlines control the main floor.
- Go below stairs
- Book separately if service history matters.
- Look for technology
- Find elevators, tunnels, and mechanical systems.
- End in the garden
- Compare exterior order with interior choreography.
Good to know
Specialty tours sell separately and involve extensive stairs. Visitors who remain on the standard route will not see every famous service or rooftop space shown online.
Notice these
- Marble staircase
- Service tunnels
- Sunken garden