The San Luis Obispo County Historical Society seeks to preserve and share the history of San Luis Obispo County, California. To this end, the society operates the Historical Museum and the Dallidet Adobe. The museum, housed within the circa 1905 Carnegie Library building, offers exhibits of local historical interest. The Dallidet Adobe is decorated with furnishings which once belonged to the Dallidet family. The grounds include an arbor and Mediterranean garden.

The museum offers exhibits, a children's activity room, student tours, research rooms, and research assistance. The Dallidet Adobe offers gardens and school tours. Reservations are required for school tours.

The Breakers is the grandest of Newport's summer "cottages" and a symbol of the Vanderbilt family's social and financial preeminence in turn-of-the-century America. Commodore Cornelius Vanderbilt (1794–1877) established the family fortune in steamships and later in the New York Central Railroad, which was a pivotal development in the industrial growth of the nation during the late 19th century. The Commodore's grandson, Cornelius Vanderbilt II, became Chairman and President of the New York Central Railroad system in 1885, and purchased a wooden house called The Breakers in Newport during that same year. In 1893, he commissioned architect Richard Morris Hunt to design a villa to replace the earlier wood-framed house which was destroyed by fire the previous year. Hunt directed an international team of craftsmen and artisans to create a 70-room Italian Renaissance- style palazzo inspired by the 16th-century palaces of Genoa and Turin. Allard and Sons of Paris assisted Hunt with furnishings and fixtures, Austro-American sculptor Karl Bitter designed relief sculpture, and Boston architect Ogden Codman decorated the family quarters.

The mansion offers tours.

Marble House was built between 1888 and 1892 for Mr. and Mrs. William K. Vanderbilt, a summer house, or "cottage," as Newporters called them in remembrance of the modest houses of the early 19th century. But Marble House was much more; it was a social and architectural landmark that set the pace for Newport's subsequent transformation from a quiet summer colony of wooden houses to the legendary resort of opulent stone palaces.

The house offers tours.

The Merchant's House Museum is New York City's only family home preserved intact, both the interior and exterior, from the 19th century. Built in 1832, this red-brick and white-marble late Federal and Greek Revival row house on East Fourth Street was home to a prosperous merchant family for almost 100 years (1835–1933). The façade, with its steeply pitched roof, dormer windows, marble door surround, and elaborate fan light recalls earlier Federal-style homes; while, inside, the formal Greek Revival parlors reflect the latest architectural fashion of the day. The Merchant's House is considered New York City's prime example of a Greek Revival home. Complete with the family's original furnishings and personal possessions, the house offers a rare and intimate glimpse of domestic life during the pivotal era of the 19th century when New York City was transformed from a colonial seaport into a thriving metropolis and the center of U.S. commerce. Three floors and eight period rooms display the possessions of the inhabitants—including their furnishings, clothing, and personal items. The costume collection includes 420 articles of clothing—primarily women’s dresses and their accompanying accessories, such as petticoats, collars, undersleeves, and chemisettes. The majority of the dresses range from 1840–1885, with two examples of 1830s dresses and an extremely rare dress ca. 1813-1815 that is in excellent condition, as well as a rare mid–19th–century corset. The 19th–century rear garden is also open for viewing.

The museum offers self-guided tours, mp3 download or cell phone audio tours, guided house tours on a variety of subjects, guided neighborhood tours, an introductory slide show, docents available to answer questions, an outreach slide show and lecture program, a traditional afternoon tea, period rooms, online exhibits, and the option of friending Gertrude Tredwell (one of the houses residents, 1840–1933) on My Space or Facebook.

The Elms was the summer residence of Mr. and Mrs. Edward Julius Berwind of Philadelphia and New York. Mr. Berwind made his fortune in the Pennsylvania coal industry. In 1898, the Berwinds engaged Philadelphia architect Horace Trumbauer to design a house modeled after the mid-18th-century French chateau d'Asnieres (circa 1750) outside Paris. Construction of The Elms was completed in 1901 at a cost reported at approximately $1.4 million. The interiors and furnishings were designed by Allard and Sons of Paris and were the setting for the Berwinds' collection of Renaissance ceramics, 18th-century French and Venetian paintings, and Oriental jades. The elaborate Classical Revival gardens on the grounds were developed between 1907 and 1914. They include terraces displaying marble and bronze sculpture; a park of fine specimen trees; and a lavish lower garden featuring marble pavilions, fountains, a sunken garden, and carriage house and garage.

The mansion offers tours.

The Telfair Museum of Art preserves and presents artwork in all forms. The Museum also operates the 1819 Owen-Thomas House, furnished with a collection of decorative arts objects.

The museum offers exhibits, self-guided and guided tours for school groups, a teacher resource library, professional development for educators, and classes and other recreational and educational events; the Owen-Thomas House offers guided tours.

An Italianate-style villa, Chepstow was built in 1860 by resident Newport architect George Champlin Mason as the summer residence of Edmund Schermerhorn. Containing the original Morris-Gallatin furnishings together with important 19th-century American paintings and documents from other former Morris family residences, Chepstow is highly evocative of the taste and collections of a descendant of one of America's founding families, placed in the context of a contemporary Newport summer home.

The home offers tours.

Hunter House is one of the finest examples of Georgian Colonial architecture from Newport's "golden age" in the mid-18th century. The house was built and decorated when Newport was a cosmopolitan city with a principle of religious tolerance that attracted Quakers, Baptists, Congregationalists, and Sephardic Jews. The great mercantile families lived patrician lives, building harbor-front mansions overlooking their trading ships, and entertained in grand style. They bought furniture and silver from local craftsmen and were the patrons of such important early painters as Robert Feke and Gilbert Stuart.

The house offers tours.

The Isaac Bell House is one of the best surviving examples of shingle-style architecture in the country. The house was designed by the firm of McKim, Mead, and White in 1883 for Isaac Bell, a wealthy cotton broker and investor. After passing through a succession of owners, the Isaac Bell House was purchased by the Preservation Society in 1996, and is today designated a National Historic Landmark. The Isaac Bell House was remarkably innovative when it appeared in 1883. It is a combination of Old English and European architecture with colonial American and exotic details, such as a Japanese-inspired open floor plan and bamboo-style porch columns.

The house offers tours.

Kingscote is a landmark of the Gothic Revival style in American architecture. Its appearance in Newport marked the beginning of the "cottage boom" that would distinguish the town as a veritable laboratory for the design of picturesque houses throughout the 19th century. In 1839 Southern planter George Noble Jones commissioned architect Richard Upjohn to design a summer cottage along a country road, known as Bellevue Avenue, on the outskirts of town. Upjohn created a highly original "cottage orne," or ornamental cottage, in the Gothic Revival style. The general effect was romantic—a fanciful composition of towers, windows, Gothic arches, and porch roofs inspired by medieval tournament tents. At the outbreak of the Civil War, the Jones family left Newport never to return, and the house was sold in 1864 to China Trade merchant William Henry King. His nephew David took over the house in 1876, and several years later decided to enlarge Kingscote. He engaged the firm of McKim, Mead, and White to make the renovations, including the new dining room. The room combines Colonial American details with exotic ornament—reflecting the architects' interest in combining eastern and western motifs. The innovative use of materials was also important, such as cork tiles as a covering for the wall frieze and ceiling, and an early installation of opalescent glass bricks by Louis Comfort Tiffany. The house remained in the King family until 1972, when the last descendant left it to the Preservation Society. Today, Kingscote is a National Historic Landmark. It is a rare example of a Gothic Revival house and landscape setting preserved intact with original family collections.

The house offers tours.