Originally built in 1816 as a 10-room townhouse for a wealthy Cayuga County judge named Elijah Miller, the Seward House sits on four acres on the outskirts of Auburn, New York. When William Henry Seward asked for Miller's youngest daughter Frances' hand in marriage, he required them to live under the same roof as him. In 1824, Seward moved in and oversaw the additions made to the townhouse from 1846–1848. When Miller passed away in 1851, he left the house to Seward, and it remained the only house that William would ever own, despite his extensive political career in Albany and Washington, D.C. After Seward's death in 1872, the house passed to his son and then his grandson, who bequeathed it to the Fred L. Emerson Foundation, who opened it as a museum in 1955.

Sunday hours available June through August. The Seward House Museum is closed January and is open by appointment only in February.