Tragic tale of the whales displayed at a Cincinnati resort in 1877 Come, listen to a tale about a whale on a hill. When a salesman brought a living white whale, a beluga, to Cincinnati to be exhibited at the Lookout House, a hilltop resort in Mount Auburn. As one might suspect, this absurd tale does not have a happy ending. On June 7, 1877, The Enquirer announced A.A. Stewart, a salesman for the Aetna Life Insurance Co. in Cincinnati, had purchased a white whale from the New York Aquarium for $10,000 plus the expenses for capture and transportation. The New York Aquarium was nothing like the scientific aquatic museums of today, but rather a P.T. Barnum-style menagerie operated by showman W.C. Coup.