1852 Gothic Revival Villa Home of LexArts in Lexington
209 Castlewood Drive, Lexington, KY 40505
Age
All Ages
Cost
Free
Gallery exhibitions are free and open to the public during posted gallery hours. Confirm current hours and exhibition schedule on the LexArts website.
Access
Limited Access
Historic villa with stairs to upper-floor galleries; ground-floor galleries are accessible.
Equipment
Photos OK
Est. 1852 · National Register of Historic Places · Alexander Jackson Davis Gothic Revival design · Home of Francis Key Hunt and William Cassius Goodloe · Headquarters of LexArts since 1984
Francis Key Hunt, a Lexington attorney and grandson of Francis Scott Key, commissioned Loudoun House in 1850. The design was by Alexander Jackson Davis, the New York architect whose Gothic Revival villas of the 1840s and 1850s helped define the American picturesque movement; Loudoun House is one of only three known Davis-designed castellated Gothic Revival villas surviving in the United States. The building was completed in 1852 on what was then the rural northern edge of Lexington.
The Hunt family occupied the house through the mid-nineteenth century. After Francis Key Hunt's death, the property passed to William Cassius Goodloe, a prominent Kentucky Republican and federal officeholder who was killed in a 1889 Lexington post-office shooting by his fellow Republican Armistead Swope. Following Goodloe's death, the house passed through subsequent ownerships and a long period as private residence and rental property. By the mid-twentieth century the surrounding farmland had been developed as the Castlewood subdivision, and the villa itself was acquired by the city of Lexington as part of Castlewood Park.
The Lexington Art League (now LexArts) negotiated occupancy of the building from the city in 1984 and has operated the structure as a free public art gallery and arts-administration headquarters ever since. The League's restoration work over four decades has been recognized in regional preservation awards. The building is listed in the National Register of Historic Places and is the most architecturally significant nineteenth-century residence within Lexington's city limits.
Sources
Loudoun House's paranormal reports have been documented across forty years of continuous arts-organization occupancy. The most consistently described phenomenon is the figural report of a Victorian-era woman observed in the western half of the house, generally on the ground floor near what was historically the front parlor. Multiple LexArts staff members across different administrative tenures have independently described the same figure.
A secondary recurring report describes an apparition of a black cat, observed near floor level in the central hall and in the upstairs corridors. A third report describes the distinct aroma of an antique floral perfume in one of the upstairs rooms now used as artist studio space; the scent is described as inconsistent with any of the cleaning products used in the building. Faint distant strains of ballroom music have been reported in the central hall, with no identifiable source.
The building was the subject of a formal 2008 paranormal investigation by The Atlantic Paranormal Society (TAPS) for the SyFy series Ghost Hunters, which aired in 2008. The investigation produced no event the production team identified as conclusive, but the episode raised the house's regional profile as a documented paranormal site. LexArts has been willing to discuss the reports with interested visitors and occasionally hosts evening events that engage the building's folklore, but the organization's core public-facing identity is its gallery program rather than its paranormal reputation.
Media Appearances
Visit the 1852 Loudoun House, which has served as the home of LexArts (formerly the Lexington Art League) since 1984. The Gothic Revival villa's restored interior houses rotating contemporary-art exhibitions across multiple gallery spaces. The architecture is by Alexander Jackson Davis, one of the most significant American architects of the mid-nineteenth century.
Every HauntBound history is researched from documented sources. We clearly separate verified historical fact from paranormal folklore.
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