After hiring architect Herman Geisky and over one hundred Italian stonemasons from Cincinnati, construction began in 1905.

The sandstone blocks were then transported across the valley from his father's farm to the construction site on an overhead tram that was 3/4 mile long.

The team of oxen then had to pull the individual segments of the columns through Paint Creek during the dry season to the mansion.

Three years after his death, his wife, Alice Jane Mayo, and his two children moved to Ashland, Kentucky due to the region's isolation.

In 1945, Evans sold the mansion and property to Most Reverend William T. Mulloy, the Roman Catholic bishop of the Diocese of Covington, Kentucky, at the time.

In October of the same year the Sisters of Divine Providence from Melbourne, Kentucky, established Our Lady of the Mountains School, which still occupies the building today.