Pope Villa

The story

Written by AI from this property's National Register nomination and the record above; every sentence is checked against its sources before it appears here. Corrections: privacy@treealive.com

Pope Villa is a brick house at 326 Grosvenor Ave. in Lexington, Fayette County, designed by Benjamin Henry Latrobe, completed in 1812 in the Federal style.

Why it's listed

It was listed under criterion C, with national significance in architecture.

Physical character

The house is built of brick on a stone foundation, with a rotunda about 19 feet across and 22 feet high, ringed by columns and pilasters, and finished inside with marble mantelpieces and a punch-work chair rail. Thomas Lewinski remodeled it in the Italianate style in 1865, and a 1987 fire later damaged the rotunda dome.

Historical context

Senator John Pope and his wife Eliza lived in the house from 1812 until her death in 1818; Pope leased it out until selling it to Catherine Barry in 1836. Henry Johnson bought the property in 1843, and Joseph and Lucy Woolfolk purchased it in 1865, using it as a summer residence until 1900. The Woolfolks divided the land into 40 lots in 1900 and sold the house in 1914, after which it was cut into apartments, ten of them by the 1960s, until a 1987 fire led the Blue Grass Trust for Historic Preservation to buy the property and restore it by 1990.