Twenty-five minutes inland from the beach, DeLand offers the Daytona area's most elegant day trip: a brick-paved downtown, a university town's energy, and Florida's only Gilded Age mansion — the 1886 winter home of John B. Stetson, the hat maker, which was the largest and most opulent house in Florida when it was built. Five of this page's six films belong to the mansion.
The mansion, by its restorers
The house's own restoration documentary dwells on the signatures: 16 patterns of original inlaid parquet floors, and Edison electric lighting installed when the house was new — Thomas Edison had a hand in its electrical system. The Growing Bolder profile of owner JT Thompson adds the rest: more than 100,000 pieces of leaded and stained glass, famous guests from President Cleveland to the Astors and Vanderbilts, and Thompson's philosophy of celebrating every era of the house rather than freezing it in 1886. The tour covers about 97% of the mansion, including the Stetson boys' schoolhouse and the meditation gardens from the 2005 restoration.
The mansion at work
A television segment from its tenth tour-anniversary year shows the house as a working wedding venue (a full giveaway wedding, vendors rallied from across Central Florida), and the WESH Christmas tour shows its seasonal peak: every room transformed by a different designer, Gatsby-glam bridal suite included. TripAdvisor voters ranked it Central Florida's number-one attraction two years running, per the segment.
The town around it
The closing film is a realtor's relocation tour — labeled as such — of DeLand life: the downtown, Stetson University and the airport's skydiving-famous Wings community. DeLand rewards the half-day: mansion tour in the morning, downtown lunch, home by the beach afternoon.
Sources: the 6 videos on this page, filmed in DeLand, Florida.