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Mansion offers elegant, romantic escape
SEBRING
A restored 1902-vintage industrialist’s mansion is now an elegant destination for a romantic escape in a small-town setting in western Mahoning County.
The Sebring Mansion Inn & Spa, 385 W. Ohio Ave., offers four luxurious, historic guest rooms for overnight lodging, fine dining for its guests, a spa and a pub. It has been on the National Register of Historic Places since 1989.
An expansion containing 10 additional overnight guest rooms and additional space for social gatherings is still under interior construction and will open in stages this year and next year.
“People are interested in just a total getaway — just to go to an out-of-the-way inn to get away from the hustle and bustle of their everyday lives and to be in a beautiful location and be pampered,” said Linda Macala, Mahoning County Convention & Visitors Bureau director, explaining the appeal of the inn.
“They enjoy wonderful meals. They enjoy spa treatments. That is the destination,” Macala said of the mansion and its guests. “They like the historical significance of the building” and its preservation.
Constructed by Italian craftsmen, the opulent mansion was built as the home of Frank Sebring, founder and manager of the Sebring Pottery Co. and Limoges China Co. in Sebring and an executive of many other businesses in Mahoning and Columbiana counties and elsewhere in Northeast Ohio.
All of the brick, stone and woodwork came from Italy.
J. Lynne Biery, the innkeeper, bought the mansion in 1996 after it had fallen into disrepair. She began restoring the mansion in 2000 and opened it for overnight stays and social events in 2009.
“It was just really a grand home with a central staircase. ... Historical properties have always been of interest,” Biery said, explaining why she bought and restored the Sebring Mansion. “They don’t build them like this anymore.”
Biery is a newly elected member of the Mahoning County Convention & Visitors Bureau.
“When we first came here, this place was falling down, and we started just to, basically, tear it apart and rebuild it, and tried to put it back exactly to what it was,” said William Murphy, mansion renovation general contractor. “It was 100 years old when we started. It’ll last another 100 easily.”
Overnight guests come from the Cincinnati, Dayton, Columbus, Canton, Akron, Cleveland, Youngstown and Pittsburgh areas, and even from the Washington, D.C., area.
Upon entering through the beveled-glass front doors, guests see a rosewood-trimmed parlor with a rosewood mantel on their left and an oval music room on their right, complete with the home’s original grand piano and an ornate Italian onyx fireplace.
An original stained-glass window, titled the “Maiden of the Manor,” adorns the landing level of the grand staircase between the first and second floors.
The four historic second-floor guest rooms, ranging from $225 to $400 a night, feature amenities including king-size beds, fireplaces, whirlpool tubs and chandeliers.
The inn also features a third-floor ballroom for large social gatherings, a sauna, a steam bath, massage rooms and indoor and outdoor therapeutic pools.
The colonnaded mansion has a sky-lighted rotunda and a wrap-around veranda, together with a formal garden with statuary and a fountain.
The Sebring Mansion was voted one of the top 10 romantic inns and spas in the United States in 2013 by ILoveInns.com.
The three-story mansion also accommodates event dining for groups of 40 or more, with valet parking, chef-prepared meals, fresh rose table centerpieces, and luxury linens, china, glassware and flatware.
University of Mount Union alumni reunions, the annual Christmas party for the Mahoning County Fire Chiefs Association, continuing education seminars for health care professionals and labor negotiations are among the events at the Sebring Mansion.
Dining service is limited to overnight guests and planned events. The inn does not operate a restaurant.
The inn is fully handicapped-accessible, and the inn and its grounds are a nonsmoking environment. No children or pets are permitted. Guests may not bring their own alcoholic beverages into the mansion.