The Clarke family of Hyde Hall were prominent landowners and cultural figures whose lives reflected the ambitions and contradictions of early 19th-century American gentry. George Clarke, a wealthy gentleman of British origin, commissioned Hyde Hall as a grand neoclassical estate overlooking Otsego Lake, intending it to symbolize refinement, permanence, and transatlantic taste. His family lived amid elegance and social aspiration, hosting guests and cultivating an image of order and cultivation, even as financial pressures and changing American realities gradually eroded their fortunes. Today, Hyde Hall preserves the Clarke family’s story as one of ambition, artistry, and the fragile balance between Old World ideals and New World challenges.