On Saturday, Sept. 26, Historic New England will participate in the 10th annual Smithsonian Museum Day Live! with free house tours at Castle Tucker and Nickels-Sortwell House in Wiscasset for visitors with Museum Day Live tickets.

Tours are given on the half hour from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m., with the last tour leaving at 4 p.m. Tickets are available for download at www.smithsonian.com/museumdaylive.

Each ticket gives the holder free entry for two people for one day only. One ticket is permitted per household, per email address.

Built in 1807 by one of Wiscasset’s most prominent citizens, lawyer, Congressman and Judge Silas Lee, Castle Tucker is an unusual style house, with a square Federal style center and two Regency style bow ends on either side. In 1858, Captain Richard Tucker Jr., scion of a prominent Wiscasset shipping family, bought the house for his new and growing family.

The Tuckers updated and redecorated to reflect the fashions and styles of their time, much of it in a style popularized by one of the earliest American lifestyle connoisseurs, Andrew Jackson Downing. Very little was changed in the house after 1900, including a kitchen with four generations of kitchen technology still in place where it was used. Preserved by three generations of Tucker women, Castle Tucker is a historic house museum shown as the family left it in 1997 when they gave it to Historic New England.

Nickels-Sortwell House, at 121 Main Street in Wiscasset, began life as the trophy home of shipping magnate Captain William Nickels at the height of Wiscasset’s fortunes as a sparkling little seaport in 1807. After Nickels’ death in 1815, a series of owners operated the house as a hotel until it was purchased in 1899 by successful industrialist and former mayor of Cambridge, Massachusetts, Alvin Sortwell, as a summer home for his large and active family. Mayor Sortwell’s wife Gertrude and daughter Frances lovingly restored the house over the years, decorating and furnishing it in the Colonial Revival style.

The Sortwell family enjoyed the mansion as a private home and family gathering place until 1956, when it was given to Historic New England. Nickels-Sortwell House offers a warm and intimate picture of life in the Gilded Age through the early twentieth century, when Wiscasset was a charmed summer getaway filled with relaxation, yachting and entertaining.

For more information, visit www.historicnewengland.org.