FLORIDA PLACE TO EXPLORE
Stetson Mansion
Volusia County · Atlantic Coast
The 1886 house John B. Stetson built in DeLand, and one of the earliest grand homes in Florida.
ABOUT THIS PLACE
Stetson made his money in hats, and the house is often called the one that hats built. George T. Pearson designed it. It runs just under ten thousand square feet on a little over two acres, and the style is a mix rather than a single thing: cottage, Gothic, Tudor, Moorish and Polynesian details on a Victorian shingle frame. Stetson planned it twice this size and cut it down when his wife Elizabeth asked him to. Thomas Edison supervised the electrical work himself, which makes this one of the first houses in the world designed and built from the start for Edison electricity. Between 1887 and 1906 the Stetsons had the Astors, Mellons, Vanderbilts and Carnegies here, along with Henry Flagler, President Grover Cleveland and the future King Edward VII. It is on the National Register of Historic Places. The estate also holds an eight-hundred-square-foot schoolhouse, now a guest house, a carriage house finished in 2009, a historic greenhouse and the original steam furnace building. Tours are booked ahead, and the Christmas tour is the busiest of the year
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