Culbertson Mansion
Near Louisville, Indiana
William Stewart Culbertson arrived in New Albany, Indiana, in his early twenties with little money and took a job as a dry goods clerk. By the time he began building his mansion in eighteen sixty-seven, he was one of Indiana's wealthiest men, his fortune built on dry goods, banking, and land. The completed house cost one hundred twenty thousand dollars, an extraordinary sum for the time, and filled twenty thousand square feet across twenty-five rooms in the French Second Empire style.
Culbertson became one of New Albany's leading philanthropists, funding an orphans home, a widows home, and civic projects across the Ohio River town. The mansion is now a State Historic Site operated by the Indiana State Museum, its elaborate plasterwork ceilings, carved woodwork, and sweeping staircase largely intact, a portrait of mid-Victorian mercantile wealth on the Indiana side of the river.
