A&E; Plans Tour Of Historic Homes

A grand tour of spectacular American homes makes up “Bob Vila’s Guide to Historic Homes in America,” debuting on the A&E Network Sunday night.

The host of the original “This Old House” series is an ideal tour guide for these three two-hour programs that take him from seaside mansions in New Hampshire to a Spanish Colonial house in Monterey, Calif.

Part 1 tours the Northeast, stopping at New York City’s Morris-Jumel Mansion, the Dyckman House in Manhattan, the Hancock Shaker Village in Massachusetts for a look at the “City of Peace,” the Joshua Wentworth House and painter Frederick Church’s fabulous Olana, a fantasy house high above the Hudson River.

Part 2, “The South,” runs Sunday night, Feb. 11, and features Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello in Charlottesville, Va., with a look at the Dome Room and Honeymoon Cottage, which the public does not see on regular tours; Rosalie in Natchez, Miss.; and Stanton Hall and the Ace of Clubs House in Texas.

Part 3, “The Midwest and West,” runs Sunday night, Feb. 18, and features Frank Lloyd Wright’s Fallingwater and a visit to his Dana-Thomas House in Springfield, Ill.; the Cooper-Molera Adobe, a Spanish Colonial home in California; and poet Robinson Jeffers’s house overlooking the Pacific Ocean from the rocky Carmel shore.

All three programs repeat the same night they originally run.