Ward Hall (Georgetown, Kentucky)

The mansion design is attributed to Major Thomas Lewinski.[3] It is the embodiment of numerous Minard Lafever design elements from his 1829 and 1835 pattern books. It was built by Taylor Buffington, with the assistance of James Bailey, a free man of color.[4]

It measures 62 ft wide (19 m) and 69 ft long (21 m), four stories, with a 14-foot-wide (4.3 m), 65-foot-long (20 m) central corridor on three floors. There are three rooms on each side of the central corridor, with the exception of the area set aside for the nautilus-chambered double elliptical staircase which rises three floors.[3]

The floor plan is based on #17/18 of the 20 permutations within the Palladian grammar by Andrea Palladio, an influential 16th-century Italian architect. At each end of the central corridor on the main floor are front and rear entrances with cut-glass transom and side lights. The domestic servants' cooking area and sleeping rooms in the basement represent one of the most intact antebellum basements in the country. In that period, the servants were enslaved African Americans. Slaves also served as laborers and artisans on the plantation: working with livestock and in the fields.

The original plantation had 500 acres. In its prime, it had "several brick dwellings for slaves and farm managers, a brick greenhouse, at least one and possibly more brick horse barns, a carriage house, a double brick outhouse, a carbide pump house, and a large tobacco barn."[3]

The property was divided in 1869 and sold in two large lots. Another piece was later sold at the turn of the 20th century, but the mansion and 150 acres had been intact since 1904. When the complex was nominated in 1985, it consisted of this 150 acres.[3] Some seventy-seven acres was considered in the nomination, as it contained the mansion and major part of outbuildings associated with the historic complex. Also on the property were later additions such as a Victorian horse barn and 1930s garage.[3]

In the 21st century, the plantation complex of the mansion and related buildings is sited on forty acres. The complex is recognized as a historic district on the National Register of Historic Places.