The Hillforest Mansion, also known as the Thomas Gaff House, is located at 213 Fifth Street, in

Aurora An aurora (plural: auroras or aurorae), also commonly known as the polar lights, is a natural light display in Earth's sky, predominantly seen in high-latitude regions (around the Arctic and Antarctic). Auroras display dynamic patterns of bri ...

Indiana Indiana () is a U.S. state in the Midwestern United States. It is the 38th-largest by area and the 17th-most populous of the 50 States. Its capital and largest city is Indianapolis. Indiana was admitted to the United States as the 19th ...

. Built in 1855 on a bluff above the

Ohio River The Ohio River is a long river in the United States. It is located at the boundary of the Midwestern and Southern United States, flowing southwesterly from western Pennsylvania to its mouth on the Mississippi River at the southern tip of ...

, it is one of the finest surviving examples of an

Italian Renaissance The Italian Renaissance ( it, Rinascimento ) was a period in Italian history covering the 15th and 16th centuries. The period is known for the initial development of the broader Renaissance culture that spread across Europe and marked the trans ...

estate house, and a rare well-preserved example of the work of architect

Isaiah Rogers Isaiah Rogers (August 17, 1800 – April 13, 1869) was an American architect from Massachusetts who eventually moved his practice south, where he was based in Louisville, Kentucky, and Cincinnati, Ohio. He completed numerous designs for hotels, ...

. The mansion, which was designated a

National Historic Landmark A National Historic Landmark (NHL) is a building, district, object, site, or structure that is officially recognized by the United States government for its outstanding historical significance. Only some 2,500 (~3%) of over 90,000 places liste ...

in 1992, and is owned and operated by Hillforest Historical Foundation. It is located in the

Downtown Aurora Historic District Downtown Aurora Historic District is a national historic district located at Aurora, Dearborn County, Indiana. The district encompasses 272 contributing buildings, 1 contributing site, and 3 contributing structures in the central business dist ...

Description and history

Hillforest was designed by

and built in 1855 for Thomas Gaff (1808–1884), a Scottish born businessman who moved to Aurora in the 1840s. Gaff and his siblings had a large number of business interests, including alcohol production (distilleries and breweries), railroads, and steamships. The design of Hillforest is evocative of the steamships that plied the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers in the 19th century. The Hillforest estate is in size, and includes, in addition to the house, formally landscaped gardens, a carriage house (a non-historic 1970s reconstruction), and land historically used for farming. The house is a 2-story frame structure covered by a low-pitch hip roof. Its main facade is finished in vertical wide board siding, while the other facades are finished in shiplap siding, with wooden quoin blocks at the corners. A semicircular section projects at the center of the main facade, rising to a belvedere on the roof. A single-story porch extends across the full width of the facade, with a second-story porch around the central projection. Windows are of full length, removing the need for doors to access the porches. The interior is sumptuously finished, with original ''

Trompe-l'œil ''Trompe-l'œil'' ( , ; ) is an artistic term for the highly realistic optical illusion of three-dimensional space and objects on a two-dimensional surface. ''Trompe l'oeil'', which is most often associated with painting, tricks the viewer into ...

'' artwork on the walls. The property remained in the Gaff family until 1926, when it was purchased by William Stark, a furniture manufacturer. The house served as a

VFW The Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW), formally the Veterans of Foreign Wars of the United States, is an organization of US war veterans, who, as military service members fought in wars, campaigns, and expeditions on foreign land, waters, or ...

lodge for a time, and was turned into a museum in 1956.

References

External links

*
Cincinnati tourism site's page
* {{National Register of Historic Places in Indiana Houses completed in 1855 National Register of Historic Places in Dearborn County, Indiana Houses on the National Register of Historic Places in Indiana Historic American Buildings Survey in Indiana Italianate architecture in Indiana Historic house museums in Indiana National Historic Landmarks in Indiana Museums in Dearborn County, Indiana Houses in Dearborn County, Indiana 1855 establishments in Indiana Historic district contributing properties in Indiana

Description and history

See also

References

External links