Ward Hall

The Historic Ward Hall is a Greek Revival antebellum plantation mansion located just outside of Georgetown, Kentucky. The 14,000 foot square home, with 27 foot high corinthian columns, is the grandest and most architecturally significant antebellum house in Kentucky, andone of the finest examples of a mid-nineteenth classical building in the United States.

The mansion was built by Junius Richard Ward (1802-1883) and his wife Matilda Viley Ward circa 1857Scott County, Kentucky natives. They built the home as a summer residence, their plantation house located near Leota Landing, Washington County, Mississippi served as their winter residence. They were not the only planters that did this, given that Kentucky was comparatively cool and malaria-free during the summer, and as part of the greater Col Robert and Jemima Suggett Johnson family of Scott County, KY, an extraordnarily powferful political and economic family dynasty whose members had plantations along the Mississippi River near Greenville, Mississippi and Lake Village, Arkansas amd who extended their influence in the Delta to Arkansas, Mississippi and Missouri.

The brick house, (62 feet wide and 69 feet long), is three stories tall, with a 14 foot wide central corridor on each floor. There are three rooms on each side of each corridor, with the exception of the area set aside for the nautilus chambered double elliptical staircase. The floor plan is based on #16/17 within the nine-cubed arrangement of the 21 permutations in the Palladian grammar. At each end of the central corridor on the main floor are front and rear entrances. The interior classical plaster work, much in its original tinted colors, magnificentwalnut woodwork, silver chandeliers, marble fireplace mantels, ash and pine floors, dining room dumbwaiter represent the highest quality available in building materials from this era,including numerous design elements by Minard Lefevre. The servants working rooms and sleeping rooms in the basement represent one of the most intact antebellum interiors in the country. In addition to the main house, there are ruins of the gothic stable in the style of A J Davis, slave house and other buildings. Forty acres of the original plantation remain with the house.

Julius Ward was forced to sell the plantation in 1867, after the Civil War wiped out his wealth. The home was offered by a later owner to the Commonwealth of Kentucky, if they would use it as the state capitol. The offer was not accepted.

The house/family is also associated with the celebrated famous beauty, Sallie Ward, the Belle of Louisville, the Belle of Kentucky and the Belle of the South.

Ward Hall is now the home of the The Ward Hall Preservation Foundation, Inc. The foundation has raised the necessary l million dollars to purchase the house and 40 acres, and is now focused on the difficult task of raising the funds necessary to restore the Hall and rebuild the outbuildings in order to operate the facility as the Ward Hall Plantation of 1857, a cultural and educational facility dedicated to teaching the culture of Kentucky. Their interpretative period is 1857-1867

Ward Hall is a Kentucky Landmark and on the National Register of Historic Places.

Please visit their website at WardHall.org

External links

[http://www.wardhall.net/ Ward Hall Official Site]