File:Bonnyconnellan Castle, Walnut Avenue, Sidney, OH - 52523249779.jpg

English: Built in 1886, this large castle-like Romanesque Revival-style mansion was built for John Loughlin and expanded in 1891 to its present size. The house was sold to Colonel J. B. Tucker in in 1907 after the Loughlin family was left financially ruined by the failure of the German American Bank of Sidney in 1904, and then sold to Stanley Bryan, whom owned the Venice Chocolate Company, in the 1920s. The house was sold in 1935 to Dr. Austin Edwards, whom lived there until he died in 1943, and then was the home of Army Major Charles Price from 1943-1949. In the 1950s, the house was a nursing home run by the Morris family, before being sold to Rose Loewer in 1957, whom bought the house as an investment property but did not live there. The house was purchased in 1967 by Mr. and Mrs. Victor Frump, whom restored the castle, and then by Tom and Vivian Jutte from 1979 until 1996, whom continued the restoration. The house was then purchased by Dean and Kim Shepherd in 1996, whom stripped the house of its original interior finishes and fittings to try and recoup their failed investment plan, irreplaceably vandalizing the historic property and destroying the historic character of the house’s interior, but thankfully not extending to the exterior. The Shepherds were sued by The Ohio Bank, whom held a mortgage on the property, as the extensive damage to the interior reduced the value of the property by 65 percent.

The house features a rusticated stone front facade, red brick side and rear facades, low slope roofs with crenellated parapets, one-over-one windows with transoms, cylindrical towers at the corners of the house’s front facade, a central rectangular tower, a semi-circular front porch with stone columns, a door with a semi-circular transom, a rear carriage house with a hipped roof and gables on the facades and a rooftop cupola, and a large stone staircase up to the front of the house from Walnut Avenue that is lined with gargoyles.

Present plans by the house’s new owners call for the restoration of the house’s interior and the conversion of the house into a Bed and Breakfast, which will undo the damage done to it by the vandalism wrought on the house by the Shepherds in 1999. The house was a contributing structure in the Sidney Walnut Avenue Historic District, listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1983, but is no longer considered a contributing structure after the major intentional damage done to the house’s interior.