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The period rooms at Winterthur represent an almost century-long evolution from private residence to public decorative arts museum. Begun in the 1920s by Henry Francis du Pont, Winterthur opened to the public in 1951. Over the next half-century, the period rooms underwent a series of changes, guided first by du Pont and then professional curators. In the twenty-first century, the museum has focused on restoring many of du Pont’s original rooms to better reflect Winterthur’s history as the country residence of a wealthy gentleman while maintaining most to reflect the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century origins of their architecture and decorative arts.