Grand Holiday at the Mansion: From Victorian to Modern at Lockwood-Mathews Mansion Museum

Now through January 6, 2013, the Lockwood-Mathews Mansion Museum is presenting “Grand Holiday at the Mansion: From Victorian to Modern.”

This exhibit features glorious Victorian holiday exhibits displayed throughout the first floor. Period rooms will be decorated to show changing traditions from the 1850s through the 1890s with many different Christmas trees, a holiday table setting and Victorian children’s toys.

A special treat this year will be a display of holiday traditions from the early 1930s drawing inspiration from a letter written by Florence Mathews, the last resident of the Mansion, in 1933.

Regular tour hours are noon - 4 p.m., Wednesday through Sunday and General Admission is $10 for adults, $8 for seniors and $6 for children and young adults ages 8-18. For more information visit www.lockwoodmathewsmansion.com. For area information visit www.visitfairfieldcountyct.com .

About Lockwood Matthews Mansion

Your first stop is the Lockwood Matthews Mansion, on the National Register of Historic Places and often described as "one of the earliest and finest surviving Second Empire style country houses ever built in the United States".

This 62- room mansion predates Newport's mansions by more than twenty years. Built in 1864 by LeGrand Lockwood, who made his fortune in banking and the railroad industry and designed by European-trained, New York-based architect Detlef Lienau, the house was completed in just four years.

Many American and immigrant artisans put the finishing interior design touches on this opulent house. The estate was foreclosed in 1874 due to Lockwood's untimely death and financial reversals.

The property was sold to the Mathews in 1876 and the family resided in it until 1938. In 1941 the estate was sold to the City of Norwalk and designated a public park.