The Hamilton Mansion — Hotel in Town of Ripley

Our family stayed in the Hamilton Mansion for a week in July for a family reunion. The host, Lauren, and her manager, Sammie, were very responsive to all requests and questions that arose.

It is a wonderful and historic property with many hidden treasures that provide hours of entertainment from discovering and enjoying them. Lauren and Sammie are both generous with their time introducing you to the property. We were at first hesitant about having children in such an historic property but Lauren was very welcoming on that issue and the kids loved all the secret and historic details.

Lauren has owned the property for just a year. We stayed there in one of the rooms in June 2021 right after Lauren had acquired it in order to check it out for the Reunion in 2022. In that one year they made many upgrades. For instance, the beds are all new and very comfortable with many rooms having queens. They added the stand-alone air conditioners so all bedrooms upstairs have independent AC units. And they have redone a lot of the wiring so there are now grounded outlets.

We used 8 of the 9 available rooms. We had 12 adults and 4 children staying at the Mansion with another 4 adults and 5 children visiting the premises on a daily basis but not sleeping there. We made extensive use of the entire property including the kitchen and outdoors which easily seated all 25 of us in a variety of configurations.

Definitely consider hiring Lauren and her team to host a Murder in the Mansion dinner for you if you have the time and resources. We really enjoyed it. They prepare the meal and intertwine the Murder in the Mansion throughout the dinner. They hide clues throughout the mansion so it helps involve everyone in the search and in visiting many rooms in the mansion if they have not done so yet.

The Wi-Fi is a nice ASUS mesh system that reaches the entire property. Spectrum internet went down one night in a severe thunderstorm and Lauren worked with us to get Spectrum on site to repair the issue. It turned out to be a literally melted incoming line. We did have some folks who were counting on internet for work. It worked for some of us, but the bandwidth of the WIFI was not sufficient for some who had stringent VPN requirements so they headed to some coffee shops in North East and Erie.

One thing to think about when assigning bedrooms is the corresponding bathroom. You will want to think through which ones have bathtubs etc. if you have younger kids. There are two half baths downstairs. Upstairs there are four full bathrooms, 1 with a shower, 2 with showers and tubs, 1 with vintage shower/tub but don’t plan on being able to stop that one up for little kid baths.

To sum up, we had a great family reunion, in large part due to the wonderful, historic Hamilton Mansion...

My family and I were super excited to stay at the Hamilton mansion for my cousin’s Sept wedding. There was 14 of us and we were told the mansion could accommodate all of us and we would have the entire mansion reserved for the wedding. We booked this over a year in advance corresponding through air BnB. When it came time to book Mike and Jim told us to book through them because it would be easier rather than the air BnB site. We were told we would be provided with transportation via their complimentary limousine they use for guests and had a hot tub on site they would be restoring which would be ready by summer 2019. This all sounded amazing! They even offered to send us floor plans of every bedroom so we could plan accordingly with guests attending and whose room would fit which couple or family members.

I read a lot of the reviews before booking and all of them had mostly positive remarks with the occasional “it is under construction..” so this didn’t bother me. However this past June we arranged a visit to the mansion for a tour and to officially leave a deposit. It was so interesting to see this place and learn all the history. After touring the mansion we agreed it looked dirty, not renovation dirty, but the rooms looked dusty and the mattress’ which were uncovered had stains all over them. The outside was just as much a disaster and the ‘sunken garden’ they promised with the hot tub over a year ago wasn’t finished let alone even started. I also did not see a limousine on the property which was supposed to be there. With the wedding ticking down we decided it wasn’t worth arguing over and were promised everything would be ready by the day of the wedding.

Long story short if the above wasn’t enough to turn us away we just found out the mansion double booked us and gave our stay away to a higher bidder who just booked 2 weeks ago. Even though we booked ours a year in advance Jim told me it didn’t count because “I spoke with his partner who had a medical condition” for one, I take this comment very seriously because I would hope no one would ever make up such a lie to get themself the better business deal. #2 I feel so sorry for this man if he did have this medical condition and sorry he is being neglected and forced to run a business through air BnB if his cognitive capabilities are hindered. What it all comes down to is not only is this mansion dirty inside it is run by a dirty business man who rather make a few extra dollars and kick out 14 people left to find accommodations for a wedding when there are only weeks left. We are Sick and...

Overall our stay was good. The mansion was overall well kept, interesting and worth the stay. However, if you are staying in the winter, you may want to bring a space heater. The end wings on either side were very cold and no space heaters were available or provided. In addition, the gas fireplaces in the west wing were not working (the maintenance worker came out, but was unable to repair the issue, and thus the gas heat was not working essentially the entirety of our stay). Finally, be careful as they have surveillance cameras inside the house which were NOT disclosed to our group.

We may have overlooked the disclosure of surveillance as part of the agreement/application. However, we had three families leave one night early because they could not tolerate the cold temperatures (rooms were most likely in the low 50s). When we approached the ownership for a 10-20% refund/consideration, no response was given. We decided NOT to follow up on this request, and thus ownership was paid the full price. No one met us at the property when we initially took possession/arrived. We were attending a wedding and did not have more people at the venue than what it holds. We did not have a New Year's party, but rather were at a wedding reception most of...