4 Best Sights in The Finger Lakes, New York

Six huge Ionic columns front this restored 1839 Greek Revival mansion overlooking Seneca Lake. The 21 rooms open to the public include servants' quarters, the children's playroom, the kitchen, dining room, and parlors. Some rooms are outfitted with the Empire-style furnishings that were used from 1850 to 1890 by the prosperous farm family that lived here. Guided tours of the house begin with an introductory film and are given on the hour weekdays and on the half hour weekends. The grounds include boxwood gardens.

The meticulously restored Elizabeth Cady Stanton House is where one of American feminism's most important leaders shaped social reform as she raised seven children. Stanton's feminist colleague, Susan B. Anthony of Rochester, was a guest in the house. A tour helps you to understand Stanton's charisma and power. The house, a mile east of the Declaration Park and visitor center (across the canal), is open early March through mid-December, with tours daily at 11:15 and 2:15 and more frequently in summer.

Now part of the National Park Service's Harriet Tubman National Historical Park, the property's simple white clapboard house is where, beginning in 1890, Harriet Tubman tended to elderly African-Americans; the adjacent brick house served as her primary residence. Before Emancipation, Tubman led more than 300 slaves to freedom in the North. At the encouragement of William Seward, an abolitionist who served in two presidential cabinets, she settled in Auburn in the late 1850s. Seward and his family lived on the same road, a mile closer to town. The grounds are open for self-guided tours; house tours are given twice-daily (reservations are not required but are encouraged).

The west-side street where suffragist Susan B. Anthony lived from 1866 until her death in 1906 looks much like it did in her day. The tree out has been replaced by two smaller chestnuts, but many of the neighboring houses still look the same. You can tour the three-story redbrick Victorian and picture Anthony working to get women the right to vote. The visitor center next door was the home of a sister. A park one block north has a statue of Anthony and friend Frederick Douglass having tea.