19 New Governors, 19 New Addresses: A Tour of America's Mansions

Nineteen newly elected US governors will face moving day in January alongside inauguration day — and all but five states maintain an official executive residence to receive them. Arizona, Idaho, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Vermont are the exceptions. The rest of the incoming governors, a class that includes several history-making firsts, will inherit houses ranging from an 1813-era Virginia landmark tradition to a 1976 replacement in Cheyenne.

Some governors never move in at all. California's Gavin Newsom recently listed the $7.5 million Fair Oaks home he preferred over the official residence, a 19th-century Victorian in Sacramento. Montana's mansion sits empty and in disrepair, and no Nebraska governor has lived in that state's official residence in over a decade.

What does this change for the incoming class?

Mostly, it hands each new governor a house with a long paper trail — and in a few states, a place in history. Florida's Byron Donalds becomes the state's first Black governor; Georgia's Keisha Lance Bottoms is the first Black woman governor-elect in the United States; Nevada's Aaron Ford is that state's first Black governor; Wisconsin's David Crowley is Wisconsin's first Black governor; New Mexico's Deb Haaland is the first Native American woman elected governor; and Texas's Gina Hinojosa is the first Latina to hold the state's highest office.

Where they'll live

• Alabama — Tommy Tuberville (R): A 119-year-old, 17-room neoclassical mansion in Montgomery, built in 1907 by architect T. Weatherly Carter, with four Corinthian columns and a bifurcated staircase.
• California — Xavier Becerra (D): A three-story, 20,000-square-foot Victorian in Sacramento, built in 1877, with 30 rooms, Italian marble fireplaces, original wood floors, and a kidney-shaped pool. Ronald and Nancy Reagan lived there briefly in 1967 before deeming it uninhabitable; it served as a museum until a 2015 renovation.
• Colorado — Phil Weiser (D): Colorado's Home, a 1908 red-brick Colonial Revival in Denver with 27 rooms, the official residence since 1960. Its grounds include gardens, a gazebo, a greenhouse, and a carriage house — plus rotating local beers on tap, a tradition from Governor John Hickenlooper's tenure, 2011 to 2019.
• Florida — Byron Donalds (R): A Greek Revival mansion in Tallahassee completed in 1956 on the site of the original 1907 mansion, which had fallen into disrepair. Amenities include a screened pool, a greenhouse, and a rose garden.
• Georgia — Keisha Lance Bottoms (D): A 30-room, 30,000-square-foot Greek Revival in Atlanta built in 1967 by architect A. Thomas Bradbury, across three levels.
• Iowa — Rob Sand (D): Terrace Hill, an 18,000-square-foot Second Empire residence in Des Moines dating to 1869; governors have lived there since 1976, and the first two floors function as a public museum and events space.
• Maine — Hannah Pingree (D): The Blaine House in Augusta, built in 1833 in Federal and Greek Revival styles, the official residence since 1919. It has 28 rooms on two stories, including a billiards room, plus a formal garden and tennis court.
• Michigan — Jocelyn Benson (D): Two residences — a 1957, 8,700-square-foot ranch in Lansing with five bedrooms and four bathrooms, and a 1901 Arts-and-Crafts summer home on Mackinac Island.
• Minnesota — Amy Klobuchar (D): A 16,000-square-foot, 1912 stone-and-brick house in St. Paul by architect William Channing Whitney, mixing English Tudor and Beaux-Arts styles, with seven bedrooms, 10 bathrooms, and nine fireplaces.
• Nevada — Aaron Ford (D): A Classical Revival mansion designed by George A. Ferris in 1909, with a grand entrance hall, reception room, formal dining room, governor's study, and luncheon room.
• New Mexico — Deb Haaland (D): The People's House in Santa Fe, a midcentury-modern structure by architect W.C. Kruger, completed in 1955.
• Ohio — Amy Acton (D): A 1925 Tudor in Bexley by architect Robert Gilmore Hanford, with three acres of gardens including a 'Storybook Trail' inspired by The Tales of Peter Rabbit.
• Oklahoma — Mike Mazzei (R): A 14,000-square-foot Dutch Colonial in Tulsa, built in 1928, with a limestone façade matching the State Capitol two blocks away — plus a pool shaped like Oklahoma, an outdoor kitchen, and a tennis court on the site of a helipad where President Lyndon B. Johnson landed in 1964.
• South Carolina — Alan Wilson (R): A two-story Federal-style mansion from 1855, originally military academy officers' quarters and the governor's residence since 1868. It holds two drawing rooms, a state dining room, a library, and second-floor private quarters.
• Tennessee — Marsha Blackburn (R): Far Hills, a three-story Georgian mansion from 1931 on a 10-acre estate in Nashville's Oak Hill suburb, the official residence since 1949.
• Texas — Gina Hinojosa (D): A Greek Revival mansion in Austin, nearly 10,000 square feet, home to Texas governors since it was built in 1856.
• Wisconsin — David Crowley (D): A Classical Revival mansion in Madison, completed in 1928, with 16,000 square feet across three floors — seven bedrooms, 13 bathrooms, seven fireplaces, and 10 gardens.
• Wyoming — Eric Barlow (R): A residence near Frontier Park in Cheyenne that replaced the 1905 executive residence in 1976; details are sparse, and an upgraded version with improved security and functionality may be in the works.

The one governor who stays put

Rhode Island's governor-elect, Democrat Helena Buonanno Foulkes, has no official mansion to inherit. She already owns two homes in the state: a $3.8 million, eight-bedroom summer house in Narragansett and a $2.3 million, three-bedroom home in Providence.

Virginia, meanwhile, holds the deepest tradition — its executive residence has housed every governor since 1813, making it the oldest continuously inhabited governor's mansion in the country. Whether the incoming class embraces such traditions, as most predecessors did, will shape the next chapter of these buildings — and in Montana and Nebraska, the question of whether the mansions get residents or repairs remains open.