The Inn at Irwin Gardens is a magnificent 13,000-square-foot Italianate mansion in Columbus, Indiana, built in 1864 by banker and businessman Joseph I. Irwin. The home was remodeled in 1880 and enlarged and redesigned over the years to accommodate four generations of the Irwin family. In 1910, a Massachusetts architect named Henry A. Phillips was hired by William G. Irwin to create the current mansion, which features intricate fine woodwork and moldings throughout the house and a tapestry brick exterior with stone trim. The roof was recovered in slate and the pitch altered to provide a more spacious third floor. A raised terrace was added on the east to link the home to the adjoining garden.
The garden on the two-acre property is the highlight, featuring a maze based on the Casa degli Innamorati in Pompeii, several fountains, and a long pool in a lowered sunken garden. There is a statue under the center arch of the garden house designed from a lakeside structure at the Villa of Hadrian in Tivoli, Italy, and Pompeian murals accent the garden house. A tall brick wall is rounded in imitation of 16th-century gardens in Mantua, Italy, and wisteria vines on the terrace’s pergolas were planted in 1911 and continue to bloom in the spring. Only the English sundial and a Japanese bronze elephant sculpture, which is a replica of one at the 1904 St. Louis World’s Fair pavilion, do not follow the Italian motif.
Clessie Cummins, founder of Cummins Engine Co., served as chauffeur to the Irwin family and developed the ideas and technology for a high-speed diesel engine in the garage on the Irwin Gardens property. With the backing of William Glanton Irwin, his ideas became the cornerstone product of Cummins, Inc., now a $13 billion Fortune 500 company. W.G. Irwin’s great-nephew J. Irwin Miller, who was born and raised in this house, was President & Chairman of Cummins and, along with his wife Xenia, had the vision to form the Cummins Foundation, which ultimately led to the development of a trove of modern architecture in Columbus, Indiana.
Posted by dockerdee64 on 2016-09-06 22:06:27