Hyde Hall was conceived and constructed by George Clarke (1768-1835), an Englishman whose great grandfather and namesake had been prominent in the colonial government of New York. As Secretary and later Lieutenant Governor of the province between 1703 and 1743, the elder Clarke had amassed 120,000 acres in the Hudson and Mohawk valleys and a sizeable fortune when he returned to England in 1745. That land was the inspiration for young George Clarke to create a new life in the United States. Settling in Albany in 1806 to oversee his vast inheritance, he met and married the lively and beautiful Ann Low Cary, widow of Richard Cooper, the elder brother of novelist James Fenimore Cooper. Although he owned numerous parcels of land in different parts of the state, Clarke purchased several hundred acres that included a headland on Otsego Lake that not only adjoined his wife's family property, but also offered a dramatic view down the lake to Cooperstown.

Clarke had a site cleared and leveled on the side of a hill he named Mount Wellington in honor of Arthur Wellesley, Duke of Wellington, a schoolmate of his at Eton College and the famous conqueror of Napoleon at the Battle of Waterloo in 1815. Plans for a small country villa were commissioned from Philip Hooker, the leading architect of Albany, in 1817 and construction began on the house and several outbuildings. Within months the Clarkes expanded their plans and began to evolve the concept of a large country house with family, guest and staff quarters set in surrounding parkland entered through a gatehouse and supported by an entire farm complex. The name Hyde Hall was chosen in honor of the Clarke family's ancient seat, Hyde Hall in England. A large wing for extra bedrooms and staff areas was built in the early 1820s. When Clarke inherited his father's English estates and a Jamaica sugar plantation in 1824, he had the means to complete his plans. A large formal entrance block with rooms for entertaining and an addition to the kitchen completed the structure between 1827 and 1833.

Hyde Hall is one of the finest representations of romantic classicism in America. The three parts of the house-the family rooms, the guest or entertaining areas and the staff quarters-were built in three different styles around a central courtyard. The first part, called the Stone House, was built for family life and is Palladian in form with a central two story, hip roofed core flanked by one story wings and fronted by a porch. The architectural details include Tuscan piers on the porch, a Palladian window surmounted by an oval arch, five oval windows and simple moldings in a restrained Federal style. The walls are smooth ashlar limestone with a narrow intervening band for every third course. The interior rooms are intimate, focused around a pair of library-living rooms. The bedrooms are surprisingly small. The second part to be constructed is composed of extensive service quarters and second-floor bedrooms. It is larger in size than the Stone House, but simpler in detail and finished on the exterior in fieldstone. The third part to be built, called the Great House, is yet another style, one on the cusp between the plain neoclassicism derived from the architecture of Sir John Soane and the more archeological Greek Revival. There is hardly a curve to be seen, all the moldings are square with incised rectangular panels around the windows and entrance doorway. The Greek Doric columns, one of the first uses of the Greek order in New York, are more slender than any known Greek prototype. The walls are smooth ashlar blocks of larger scale and without the differentiation in the courses as found on the Stone House. The interior contains two grand entertaining rooms, a Drawing Room and Dining Room, measuring 34 by 26 feet with decorative 19 foot ceilings. A semi-circular staircase leads to the Billiard Room in the attic pavilion.

The house was set in parkland comprised of fields, streams and wooded hillsides. Guests entered the property through a domed gatehouse and proceeded on a curving, mile-long drive that crossed a covered bridge, now the oldest in America, and built up expectation by offering fleeting glimpses of the house, Otsego Lake and the countryside. One first saw the entirety of the house from the southeast after mounting the drive up to the hillside terrace. The low and multi-roofed Stone House angled to the left while the rectangular main block with its impressive Doric portico angled to the right, setting the structure into the wooded hillside rising behind it. The asymmetry of the structure fit into the natural landscape and the varied, but not too different architectural styles intentionally suggested a family seat built over generations rather than one lifetime.

The house and site experienced very few changes over the subsequent years. When the son of the builder went bankrupt in 1886, the house, its contents and surrounding 3000 acres were purchased by his son at public auction. A chapel replaced Ann Cary Clarke's bedroom suite in 1908 and bathrooms were added. But Hyde Hall remained substantially the same as it was during the life of its builder, George Clarke, and continued as the home for two subsequent generations of the Clarke family until New York State acquired the property in 1963 and created Glimmerglass State Park.

The passage of time compounded by the closing of the house during World War II had taken a toll on Hyde Hall. When the State took over ownership, there were no plans and no funds to preserve the structure and the threat of demolition became very real. The Friends of Hyde Hall, an organization led by members of the Clarke family and preservationists who recognized the unique and important qualities of the house, was formed in 1964 to save the house and help the State in maintaining it for the public's use and enjoyment. It was immediately accepted on the National Register of Historic Places and subsequently declared a National Historic Landmark, the only such designation in Otsego County. Many of the contents, still owned by members of the family, were donated to the Friends of Hyde Hall and returned to the house. In 1988 the Friends acquired a 30-year renewable lease on Hyde Hall and its immediate environs as well as responsibility for its restoration and management. The Friends was renamed Hyde Hall, Inc. in 1999, but its purpose remains unchanged.