Mayor Linda Gorton joins Blue Grass Trust representatives to announce the long-awaited $3.4 million restoration of Lexington’s historic Pope Villa, set to begin this year
The long-awaited restoration of one of Lexington’s oldest and most historic properties will soon begin. The Blue Grass Trust for Historic Preservation has announced a $3.4 million phased rehabilitation plan for Pope Villa, to be undertaken by Mitchell Park Companies, a Washington, D.C.–based historic property development firm.
The home, completed in 1813 for U.S. Senator John Pope and his wife, Eliza, stands on what is now Grosvenor Avenue off Rose Street in the central downtown neighborhood. It is one of only three surviving residences designed by renowned architect Benjamin Henry Latrobe who, in addition to design efforts in Kentucky, is best known for his work on the White House and the U.S. Capitol porticos.
The announcement came at a news conference held in the front yard of Pope Villa, attended by local officials and supporters of the Trust. “The rehabilitation will largely follow the Pope Villa Master Plan, which was adopted by the Blue Grass Trust in 2018,” said Jonathan Coleman, executive director of the Trust.
Latrobe was awarded eight commissions in Kentucky between 1802 and 1817, six of them in Lexington. Five were built here, but Pope Villa is the only one still standing.
Financing for the three-year restoration is a mix of private investments, donations, and public funds — among them a $478,000 Save America’s Treasures grant administered by the National Park Service. “This is the culmination of a dream four decades in the making and made possible by scores of dedicated and passionate preservationists who have the foresight and vision to step up and ensure that preservation,” Coleman told the crowd.
Coleman’s “four decades” reference dates to 1988, when the Trust purchased Pope Villa a year after a fire caused serious damage. At that time, the villa had been partitioned into ten apartments, primarily occupied by University of Kentucky students. The Trust discovered, however, that much of the original structure remained intact behind later walls and additions, offering hope for full restoration.
“All projects like this are a journey, some even a saga,” said Mark Letenzi, managing member of Mitchell Park Companies and the person who will oversee the project. “But it’s incredible the sheer volume of historical and architectural data (on the Pope house) that is available to us.”
Still, the challenges will be great. “It’s going to be quite difficult, from the pre-development side, financing, the ultimate design and even finding the trades to do some of this work,” Letenzi said. “Maybe only one of them can do special plastering or work on certain trim. We will have to do an exhaustive search to find the right people.”
Lexington Mayor Linda Gorton addressed the gathering and lauded the Trust for stepping up and launching the project “for the long game,” she said. “As we celebrate Lexington’s 250th birthday all this year, we reflect on the legacy of a city once known as the ‘Athens of the West.’ That legacy lives on with Pope Villa.”
Gorton called Pope Villa “beautiful… until you walk inside,” to laughter from the crowd. The interior has been gutted and Letenzi warns the public of the trials that await. “You obviously cannot build with compromised material alongside new material,” he said. “There are going to be a lot of those judgement calls once we get started. It is sometimes a ‘learn as you go’ process with all hands-on-deck making real-time decisions about how to proceed.”
Letenzi says he has consulted on the development of several history museums, the kind of work most comparable to what he will be doing at Pope Villa.
Lexington architect Haviland Argo, a member of Friends of Pope Villa, is convinced the home is something special. “Not only does Mark recognize the architectural significance of the building and the impact it has had on the city of Lexington and its role in the nation’s history, but he also recognizes its future potential,” Argo told the audience. “Latrobe envisioned this house as a new model for domesticity in the young republic called America. Similarly, Mark sees this building as a new model for preservation.”
Coleman said that upon completion of construction, the secondary rooms of the Villa will be available for lease as light-use office space. The primary rooms will be shared spaces for the tenants, but will also remain accessible to the public and will offer educational opportunities about the building’s history and its many inhabitants over the decades.
After the 1987 fire, intense architectural and historic research was conducted on the Pope residence. In letters, Latrobe “practically apologized” for what he called a complicated plan that must have “perplexed and bewildered” the Pope family and builders. His design featured a square brick exterior, a second-story hidden rotunda surrounded by a suite of entertainment rooms — unusual features for frontier-era Kentucky. At the time, some wondered if Lexington, located on the western edge of the new American frontier, was cosmopolitan enough to pull off the construction project, according to Daniel Ackermann, writing in a column for the Decorative Arts Trust. Yet local craftsmen proved capable of turning Latrobe’s vision into reality, and the home was built just two decades after Kentucky’s statehood.
Mayor Gorton summed up the significance of Pope Villa, saying: “It is not just a beautiful home, it is the best surviving example of Latrobe’s residential architecture, and one of the most important structures of the Federal era.”