Rensselaer Republican, Volume 14, Number 12, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 8 December 1881 — Indiana’s Executive Mansion. [ARTICLE]

Indiana’s Executive Mansion.

Indianapolis News. The repugnance of General Arthur to live in the White House, and the extensive depurations it is undergoing, look as if it were haunted by some maleficent agency, and sooner or later would be abandoned for a healthier site and a handier house. Our little Indiana White House proved a mare fatal residence than even that of the Nation, and had to be abandoned after Just twenty-five years of unhealthy and uncomfortable occupancy. It has hapEened before now that still grander omes have had to be given up to malarial influences. The next selections will be made more wisely. The site of the Washington house was determined by that of the Capitol. One being put at one eud of the of the main avenue made it fit and symetricAl to out the other at the other end, without regard to the hygienic considerations. The selection of our home executive residence was asort of a “Hobson’s choice.” There was no other suitable building attainable. Ur. John H. Handers haa built it but two or three years before, and in 1853 the State bought it and Gov. Wallace, the doctor’s son-in-law, spent the last year of his three year’s time in it. Gov. Bigger took it next, lived through his term, but died very soon after leaving it. Gov. Whitcomb’s wife died in it. Gov. Wright lost two wives in two terms in it. Gov. Willard died while his family occupied it, and Gov. Morton’s family was constantly ailing during the thresyears he lived in it. He left in’64 and went to the Bates House. Since then the executive residence as been as it was at first, a rented house or the private resldenoe of the Governor before election, as Gov. Ray’s was, and Gov. Noble’s, and Gov. Porter’s is now. Sometime we may have a Legislature with unaminity enough to build a suitable Governor’s house instead of paying a sum equal to pretty fair salary as rent. The capital sum of that annual outlay should build a first-class Hooaier palace.