If you visit historic Georgetown, Kentucky on a weekend take time to visit Ward Hall. Ward Hall is a wonderful Greek Revival Mansion just outside of downtown Georgetown. The people who volunteer as the tour guides are very knowledgeable of the area and the home. The tour includes all 3 floors of the property as well as the basement and it worth the small price of admission. You get to see all of the house and the grounds for this price. I would recommend the Christmas candlelight tour!
Great history. I didn't know about this place. It has been restored nicely. It's great to happen upon places like this in your travels. America, what a great country.
This place is amazing. Our tour was so personalized. You could feel his passion. It is not a museum. It is more like a recently opened time capsule. Fabulous!!! If you love historic places you will love it.
This historical home is beautiful if you can catch a candlelight tour during Christmas. Great holiday treat
very nice tour of the historic home by volunteers , tour all three floors of the property and the basement, well worth the small admission fee
Ward Hall was closed, so we simply drove up the driveway for a closer look. The house could be MAGNIFICIENT. We are hoping they have enough funds to begin renovation before it's too late. Brochures and photos we saw are much more complimentary than reality. That poor, amazing structure is in bad need of repair.I peeked in the back windows and the rooms look inviting and full of history.Please go when it's open so they can afford to preserve its beauty!!
I was unaware of this place until I went there on a tour. I expected a dilapidated house from what I had read, but most of it was in really good shape. The tour was excellent and the house itself was beautiful. The guy who did our tour was also really good. Seeing the slave quarters was pretty eye-opening when you compare it to how the Ward family was living. You get to see every room from the basement all the way up to the attic (which, i must say, would have been hot to live in in July).I look forward to coming back as they continue restoration efforts.
Ward Hall is located in Scott County, Kentucky. About 30 minutes outside of Lexington. This historic location is an example of a Greek Revival antebellum mansion. Beautiful candlelight tours at Christmas. Complete with tour guides dressed in time period costumes. Check their website for directions and times open.
It was just by chance that I came across Ward Hall, and for someone that likes historic landmarks, it was like hitting the lottery. Two steps into the home and I became speechless. It was a WOW moment.Ward Hall is a Greek Revival antebellum plantation mansion located in Georgetown, Kentucky (less than an hour from Lexington). The 12,000-square-foot with 27-foot high Corinthian fluted columns, is one of the finest examples of a mid-nineteenth classical building in the United States. The mansion was built by Junius Richard Ward (1802–1883) and his wife Matilda Viley Ward circa 1857 in Scott County, Kentucky. The mansion was built as a summer residence; their plantation house located near Leota Landing, Washington County, Mississippi served as their winter residence.The mansion is attributed to Major Thomas Lewinski and is the embodiment of numerous Minard Lafever design elements from his 1829 and 1835 pattern books. It was built by Taylor Buffington, measures 62 ft. wide and 69 ft. long, four stories, with a 14-foot-wide, 65-foot-long central corridor on three floors. There are three rooms on each side of the central corridor, with the exception of the area set aside for the nautilus-chambered double elliptical staircase which rises three floors.The servants working rooms and sleeping rooms in the basement represent one of the most intact antebellum basements in the country. Forty acres of the original plantation remain with the house.Just a last note, as you walk through the front door you are taken back in time to a life style that was, to say the least, “remarkable”. You must discover Ward hall for yourself.
Don't get your hopes up: this is no Mount Vernon or Monticello. The structure is in poor shape (a nearby Gothic barn has already collapsed), but local efforts are making some progress in preservation, if not restoration. Open for special occasions, the house is an authentic Southern mansion on a grand scale. If you have the chance to visit, take it.