Culbertson Mansion's Remarkable and Scandalous Women
Walking through the Culbertson Mansion, the historic Indiana home on Main Street in New Albany, can be humbling. The 25-room, 20,000-square-foot structure, designed in the Second Empire style, simply seems to go on and on.
For example, on the first floor there’s a room the Culbertson family had used for entertaining that is 40 feet long by 20 feet wide, complete with a ceiling so ornate it almost feels like being in a chapel.
“Literally, this room is bigger than some people’s homes,” Devin Payne, Southeast Regional Director for State Historic Sites for Indiana State Museum and Historic Sites, said during a recent walk-through.
The three-story home was built shortly after the Civil War by William S. Culbertson, a man who began as a humble dry goods clerk in Pennsylvania before moving west to New Albany and ultimately made his fortune as a businessman and banker. At one point, he became the richest man in Indiana.
