Like New Albany, Jeffersonville was a hub of steamboat-building in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The Howard Steamboat Museum is located in the five-story mansion built by steamboat innovator and tycoon James Howard. One of my favorite stops in the area is just about 15 minutes upriver from New Albany in the town of Jeffersonville. It's actually pretty standard casino fare, but I took away $200 more than I sat down with at the blackjack table - so it holds a special place in my heart.) ( Modern opulence - or perhaps excess - is on display about eight minutes from downtown New Albany at the Horseshoe Casino. Today, the Center for Art History is home to a gallery with changing themes, an engaging exhibit on the history of the Underground Railroad in Indiana and a display of mechanized folk-art dioramas created by local carver Merle Yenawine in the 1940s and 1950s. Like many towns, New Albany was given a library building by industrialist Andrew Carnegie. In the formal parlor, huge chandeliers, pier mirrors, lush draperies and a vast, hand-painted ceiling might put a visitor in mind of the French Palace of Versailles.Īnother happy reminder of the great wealth of the day is New Albany's 1904 beaux - arts style Carnegie Center for Art History. Today, visitors will see amazingly intricate plasterwork, rich woodwork and decorative painting, much as it appeared in Culbertson's day. The house underwent significant alterations through the years but in the past quarter century has been largely restored to its original glory. It has 15-foot ceilings on the first floor and 17-foot ceilings on the second, but the clearance on the third floor is just 12 feet (so watch your head). The house, which cost the then-incredible sum of $125,000 to build, features 25 rooms. The 20,000-square-foot mansion was built in 1867 by William Stewart Culbertson, a banker and industrialist and one of the wealthiest men in the region. The gem of the row is Culbertson Mansion, now a state historic site. The house sits along Mansion Row, a historic district sporting an impressive number of other Victorian-era mansions. Bicknell installed naval-style copper-pipe speaking tubes throughout the house and also added a large cupola for a better view of the Ohio River.
The inn is named for George Augustus Bicknell, a rear admiral in the Navy who married Slone's daughter and lived in the house with her. The mansion has 12-foot ceilings on the first and second floors and massive 10-foot-high doors throughout that almost make you feel as if you've stumbled onto the set of Honey, I Shrunk the Kids.Īnd yet, the inn is surprisingly cozy, which I attribute to innkeeper Valla Ann Marcus, a former Kentucky and Georgia resident who has retained all of her Southern charm and friendliness despite now residing north of the Mason-Dixon line. Guests will see the original floors and moldings and a winding mahogany staircase with cherry balustrade.
The current innkeeper is just the fourth owner of the property, which has been used as a single-family home until now and has been spared many of the architectural indignities that befell other old beauties. Actually, the mansion was built in 1850 before the industrial boom of post-Civil War America that produced so many fortunes and most of the mansions. My base of operations was the Admiral Bicknell Inn, a modest mansion by Gilded Age standards, a mere 5,900-square-foot abode of Italianate heritage. Travelers looking for a bit of Gilded Age opulence might not think first of small-town southeastern Indiana.īut the boatyards, banks, factories and other businesses that sprang up near the Falls of the Ohio River in the late 18th century created fortunes - fortunes that still cast their shadows in the form of beautiful mansions, some now open to the public as museums or inns.
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