Culbertson Mansion

Description

In March 1896, the local newspapers announced that Samuel Alexander Culbertson, son of Indiana's wealthiest man, William Stewart Culbertson, a dry goods, railroad, utilities and banking tycoon, had purchased land on Third Avenue, the most fashionable street in Louisville, to build his new home. After barely a year of construction, the mansion was completed in 1897 just in time to receive guests for the 23rd running of the Kentucky Derby. And for the next half century the Kentucky Derby was to be the focus of Culbertson's life and this house. Samuel's boyhood home just across the river in New Albany is a pretentious French Empire style mansion built in 1867. It is now a museum. Next door to that is a mansion given to Samuel and his new wife Louise as a wedding present by his father in 1886. William Culbertson was totally and unconditionally opposed to gambling in any form, and even disinherited one of Samuel's brothers for betting on horses. Young Samuel, however, loved the races too, though in secret, and had to wait until his father's passing to move nearer the venue that would eventually put him into the pages of history. When Samuel , his wife Louise, their two sons, and entourage of servants moved into their new home, Third Avenue was the millionaire's row of Louisville, "a genteel area at the edge of a burgeoning city, reflecting the tastes and extravagances of the late Victorian era. The residents worked hard to live up to the magnificence of the