Jeffersonville, Indiana
This 22-room Romanesque Revival mansion was erected during the 1890s by Edmond J. Howard, son of James Howard, founder of the Howard Ship Yards. Designed by Louisville architects Max J. Drach and John Hardin Thomas and built at a cost of $85,000, much of its excellent craftsmanship reflects the work of company shipbuilders. The house features both stained and leaded-glass windows, paneled rooms, and a music room in the Moorish style complete with its original neo-Louis XV furniture. The museum houses a fascinating collection of navigational equipment, paddlewheels and replicas of steamboats, among other exhibits. The Queen Anne-style carriage house and an extensive yard enclosed by a heavy brick wall are features which accent the lifestyle of a wealthy Gilded Age family. The entire structure recently underwent extensive restoration.
JEFFBOAT: By 1940, battered
by the Great Depression and the 1937 flood, the Howard Ship Yard
had fallen on hard times. In 1942 the US Navy purchased the facility and
several adjoining properties and turned them over to the Jeffersonville
Boat & Machine Company, or Jeffboat, for the production of landing
craft and other warships. By the end of World War II, Jeffboat had launched
123 LST' (Landing Ship-Tank), 26 submarine chaser, and hundreds of other
craft. After the war, Jeffboat turned to building barges and towboats,
but it also has turned out such custom-built vessels as the luxury paddlewheeler
Mississippi Queen, Opryland's General Jackson, and the coastal cruise ship
Monterey Clipper. Today, Jeffboat, Inc. is America's largest inland shipbuilder
and one of Southern Indiana's largest industrial employers.