Old Fayette County Courthouse (Lexington History Center)

The block at 215 West Main Street has held a courthouse since Fayette County was carved out of Virginia: the first courthouse was erected in 1782, and four more buildings have stood on or near the site, with the bell in the current dome having served every courthouse since 1806. The fourth, designed by Thomas Boyd in 1887, burned on May 14, 1897, prompting commissioners to commission Cleveland architects Lehman & Schmitt for a fireproof replacement.

The Lehman & Schmitt design — sometimes described as Richardsonian Romanesque in spirit — was built between 1898 and 1900 at a cost of $323,000 (roughly $12.22 million in 2022 dollars). First court business convened on February 3, 1900. For more than a century the building served as the active seat of county justice, including the era of segregated proceedings that left a heavy mark on the surrounding Cheapside square.

After a long period of underuse, the city completed a $33 million restoration and reopened the courthouse in 2018 as the Lexington History Center: a hybrid civic museum, visitor center, café and event space operated in partnership with the Blue Grass Trust for Historic Preservation. The Lexington History Museum had previously occupied the building from 2003 until structural concerns forced its closure in 2012; staff from that earlier museum era are the source of most of the documented paranormal accounts.

The building is contributing to the National Register and physically anchors the redeveloped square now known as Henry A. Tandy Centennial Park, named in 2020 for the Black entrepreneur and mason whose firm Tandy & Byrd laid the brick under the courthouse's stone facade.