Steamboat Gothic

On show at Cincinnati's Taft Museum last week were 52 photomurals of stately old Ohio, Indiana and Kentucky houses. They reflected the architectural influence of Connecticut and the old South, the wave of classic, pillared Greek Revival that swept all U.S. architecture in the middle 1800s. But Cincinnati's show contained one style of architecture that was as indigenous to the Ohio River Valley as the river itself: Steamboat Gothic. Best example was a fine old mansion, "Hill-Forest," which stands on the muddy Ohio's banks near Aurora, Ind. (see cut). With circular tower and porches, wrought-iron balustrades, Steamboat Gothic represented the last word in elegance to riverboat captains of the 1850s, is one of the most elaborate forms of U.S. architecture ever built of wood.

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