1/9/10

Turner and I went to the hamilton township library today to see what else we could find out.

There was some interesting info which I'll load up as soon as I get to a scanner, but we found that the overlook mansion was one of the few of the hamilton mansions that was not owned by the Abbotts.

This particular property was one of the Decous mansions and known in the day as the Decous Overlook mansion.  The mansion was sold as part of the white city amusement park project and became the White City Hall.  In 1922 the house was used as a Casino as seen in the "black cat" story. The front of the house has remained  relatively the same over the years, though the porch used to go all the way around the house.

From what we can see, the side porch was removed, the foundation backfilled and seeded giving it the appearance of a terrace. Once we remove the back rooms, we'll see whether we can salvage the original porch floor, or whether we will backfill the remainder of the foundations of the porch and continue the terrace the rest of the way around the house.

We believe that the bow window in the living room between the two fireplaces was once large doors going out to the side porch. If funds allow, we will open this back up as a doorway to the outside.