Loudoun House (Lexington Art League)

The Lexington Art League was founded in 1957. Its visual arts center is located in the Loudoun House, which was inspired in part by the Romantic Movement of the 1850s. Built in the early 1850s at a cost of over $30,000 the house was designed by New York architect Alexander Jackson Davis and constructed by John McMurtry of Lexington, both of whom worked extensively with the Gothic Revival style. As such, the house is notable for its towers, vaults, diamond-paned windows, and asymmetrical lancet all characteristic of the Gothic style.

Francis Key Hunt built this house in the early 1850s and named it after his wife Julia’s favorite song, “The Belles of Loudoun.” They lived here until 1870 (or 1884, sources differ) when they sold the property to Colonel William Cassius Goodloe, chairman of the national committee of the Republican Party and later Minister to Belgium. The property remained in the Goodloe family until 1921 when it was purchased by J.F. Bailey. The city of Lexington bought the Loudoun House a few years later and turned the surrounding grounds into the Castlewood Park and Community Center. The Lexington Art League moved into the house in 1984.

Loudoun House Photographic Collection. Explore UK. Accessed April 06, 2019. https://exploreuk.uky.edu/fa/findingaid/?id=xt700000076w.

Loudoun House. National Park Service: Lexington, Kentucky: The Athens of the West. Accessed April 06, 2019. https://www.nps.gov/nr/travel/lexington/lou.htm.

History. Lexington Art League. Accessed April 06, 2019. http://www.lexingtonartleague.org/about.html.

Lexington Herald-Ledger. Castlewood Park, 1951. Kentucky Photo Archive. November 12, 2015. Accessed April 06, 2019. http://www.kyphotoarchive.com/2015/11/12/3602/.