Ten Chimneys was the summer home and gentleman's farm of Broadway actors Lynn Fontanne and Alfred Lunt, and a social center for American theater.

[3] Ten Chimneys was declared a National Historic Landmark in 2003, for the significance of its owners to the history of performing arts, and for its distinctive architecture and decoration.

In 1912 he left Carroll and headed east to join a theater company in Boston, where he eventually became a successful stage actor, achieving acclaim in Booth Tarkington's play Clarence in 1919.

[8] The couple's first summer at home with Alfred's mother was strained and in 1924 they set about expanding the chicken coop into a cottage for themselves to live in.

The design was a collaboration between Lunt and architect Charles Dornbusch of Loebl, Schlossman and Demuth of Chicago, who helped with most of the structures on the estate, including the cottage fourteen years before.

In 1947 they completed the new chicken coop (designed with advice from a specialist at the UW Ag Department) and greenhouse,[13] and the gatehouse.

[14] Also in 1947 they reconstructed the Studio, a traditional hewn-log building that was taken apart in Sweden, shipped to America, and reassembled for use as a rehearsal space.

[5] In his NRHP nomination, Jim Draeger states "the crowning jewel of Ten Chimneys is the finely decorated and furnished interior of the main house."

The entry hall features marble tile, hand-painted murals on the walls, a porcelain Swedish stove, and a dramatic spiral staircase that leads to the second level.

Once while visiting the Oliviers in England, he wrote home: "...I had a high old time as their garden was full of weeds & did I go to it..." From the initial three acres, the farm at Ten Chimneys grew to over 100.

Some butter, meat and vegetables were shipped to the Lunts in New York and even in Europe during WWII, when rationing made them hard to obtain otherwise.

A host of stage and screen luminaries made pilgrimages to Genesee Depot as guests of the Lunts, including Noël Coward, Helen Hayes, Orson Welles, Laurence Olivier, and Vivien Leigh.

"[16] Upon retirement, the Lunts returned to Ten Chimneys and spent the rest of their lives at their beloved home in Genesee Depot,[17] with Alfred dying in 1977 and Lynn in 1983.

Ten Chimneys Foundation also continues to fulfill the estate's original role as a home for the arts by providing programming and resources for theater professionals.