Column: This is one of the most important houses in US architectural history. It could be yours

LEXINGTON, Ky. -- In 1987, a fire consumed an old house on Grosvenor Avenue that like many in Lexington had been carved into a warren of student apartments.

The house was a shambles, but the destruction proved what many had suspected: Underneath the new doors and tiny rooms was a masterpiece residence designed by America’s first architect Benjamin Henry Latrobe, who also designed much of the U.S. Capitol.

The Bluegrass Trust for Historic Preservation bought the ruin and began to uncover what many architectural historians consider a radical and revolutionary house first built in 1811 for U.S. Sen. John Pope and his wife, Eliza. It’s one of three surviving houses designed by Latrobe in the country; he had eight commissioned projects in Kentucky, five of which were built.

Pope Villa is the only one left in the state.

The Bluegrass Trust stablized the Pope Villa with a new roof, and along with numerous experts, embarked on a nearly 40-year research project, studying everything from Pope’s theories of domestic architecture to 19th-century wallpaper design. The grand second-story interior rotunda and oculus skylight emerged, along with two curved drawing rooms.

Architectural historian Patrick Snadon, who co-wrote “The Domestic Architecture of Benjamin Henry Latrobe,” called the house one of the most important buildings in Federal America, one “in which he aimed to create a new American house type and show the world how the citizens of a new, democratic Republic might live. It is, in this respect, a building of international significance.”

But four decades later, the Trust has not been able to completely restore the house or ensure it survives into the future. And so, it has recently announced a novel approach to do both: The group has released a Request for Expressions of Interest for people or groups to buy the house.

“The most endangered building in the world is one without a purpose,” said the Trust’s Executive Director Jonathan Coleman. “We are looking for someone who has the resources to restore it and has a plan for its long-term feasibility.”

Restore and reuse

The house comes with a gift: A $748,000 matching grant from Save America’s Treasures IF the new owners can raise the matching amount. That might be enough to build a new roof and basically stablize the house, Coleman estimates. It will probably take as much as another $2 million to recreate Pope’s original design.

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