Federal Gratz Park townhouse built in 1813 and later home to Union surgeon Dr. Robert Peter, said to host the apparition of a Union soldier patient — exterior viewing only from Market Street.
228 Market Street, Lexington, KY 40507
Age
All Ages
Cost
Free
Private residence — exterior viewing only. No paid access.
Access
Wheelchair OK
Public sidewalk along Market Street; building visible from public right-of-way.
Equipment
Photos OK
Est. 1813 · Federal Architecture · Gratz Park Historic District · Civil War Medical History · Transylvania University Connection
Robert Grinstead, a Lexington bricklayer, built the Federal townhouse at 228 Market Street in 1813 and sold it to John Stark, a farmer. The house's modest Federal facade — symmetrical, brick, with a centered doorway — was characteristic of early-19th-century Lexington domestic architecture and remains substantially intact.
Transylvania University, which had no formal president's residence, rented the property in 1820 to house its newly arrived president, Horace Holley. Holley lived in the John Stark House during his most consequential years at the university — the same period in which Constantine Rafinesque taught there and during which Holley would eventually dismiss Rafinesque in 1826, generating the curse legend now attached to Old Morrison. Architect Gideon Shryock also lived in the John Stark House in 1832, the year he was designing and supervising construction of Old Morrison less than a block away.
The house's most consequential resident, in terms of its later ghost lore, was Dr. Robert Peter, a Transylvania medical school professor who lived in the home during the Civil War. Peter served as a Union surgeon during the war, working with the wounded and dying brought through Lexington as the city changed hands repeatedly. His diary entries from those years, along with his daughter Frances Peter's published wartime diary, document a household at the working edge of medical care for both Union soldiers and civilians.
The John Stark House remains a private residence today and is a contributing structure to the Gratz Park Historic District, listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Its layering of Federal architecture, university connections, and Civil War medical history makes it one of the more historically dense addresses in central Lexington.
Sources
The John Stark House lore is concentrated on a single reported figure: the apparition of a Union soldier observed on the property. According to the Smiley Pete Publishing 2012 Gratz Park feature and Southern Spirit Guide's coverage of the historic district, the figure's identification as a Union soldier flows from the building's documented role as the home of Dr. Robert Peter, a Union surgeon who treated wounded soldiers during Lexington's contested Civil War years.
The lore's interpretive framing is that the figure may be a patient who died in Dr. Peter's care, returning to the place where he received his last treatment. The reading is satisfying as folklore — it ties the apparition directly to the documented historical use of the building — but it is not anchored to a named witness, a specific incident, or a date in any published source we located. The story circulates as oral tradition within the Gratz Park cluster of haunted-house writeups.
The house is a private residence today, and there is no public-access path to verify the lore. The site is included on US Ghost Adventures' Haunted Lexington walking tour as part of the Gratz Park stops; visitors taking that tour or doing a self-directed walking visit can see the building from the Market Street sidewalk but should respect the privacy of current occupants. We flag this venue as needs-review given the thinness of paranormal documentation and the private residential status of the property.
Follow-up review (2026-05-15): targeted searches for additional independent paranormal reports beyond the Gratz Park Neighborhood Association and Southern Spirit Guide profiles did not return a second specific witness account for the Union-soldier apparition. The house remains a private residence and the witness pool stays thin; we keep the venue at needs-review.
This venue is privately owned and not open to the public — appreciate from the public sidewalk on Market Street only.
Notable Entities
The John Stark House is a private residence and only available for exterior viewing from the Market Street sidewalk. The Federal townhouse fits naturally into a Gratz Park walking-tour route that includes the Bodley-Bullock House and Hunt-Morgan House directly across the park.
Every HauntBound history is researched from documented sources. We clearly separate verified historical fact from paranormal folklore.
Lexington, KY
The Maria Dudley House was built in 1879 by Maria B. Dudley on what had previously been the side yard of the Hunt-Morgan House, in Lexington's Gratz Park Historic District. Designed by architect Phelix Lundin in a starkly Victorian style, the castle-like townhouse stands out among the predominantly Federal and Greek Revival buildings of the surrounding park. It remains a private residence today.
Louisville, KY
The Pink Palace is a three-story Victorian mansion with a French chateau-style turret at 1473 St. James Court in Old Louisville. Built around 1891, it operated initially as the St. James Court Gentlemen's Club and Casino and was acquired in the 1910s by the Woman's Christian Temperance Union, which painted the red brick exterior pink. It is a private residence and a fixture of Old Louisville ghost walks.
Lexington, KY
The Hunt-Morgan House, known as Hopemont, was completed in 1814 for John Wesley Hunt, described by contemporaries as Kentucky's first millionaire. The Federal-style mansion in Lexington's Gratz Park Historic District later became the boyhood home of Confederate General John Hunt Morgan and the birthplace of Nobel laureate Thomas Hunt Morgan, making it one of the most historically layered private residences in the antebellum South.