Abandoned house in Kentucky

Thomas B. Watkins House, Lexington Kentucky

Date added: April 23, 2023 Categories: Kentucky House

The Thomas B. Watkins House, a two-story brick late Italianate residence, is the most intact and best documented of the later works of John McMurtry (1812-90), Lexington's most prolific 19th-century architect-builder. He designed it in 1887, shortly before his death, for his daughter Anne and son-in-law, Thomas B. Watkins, a prosperous shoe merchant and, incidentally, a step-nephew of statesman Henry Clay. Set on an ample lot in a conspicuous location south of downtown Lexington, the Watkins house is essentially intact, both inside and out, in spite of recent neglect, having remained in the Watkins family until 1978. It was built according to plans and drawings which are the most extensive preserved for any of McMurtry's designs, and exhibits several of his characteristically ingenious features, as well as his intimate knowledge of the clients' habits and wishes. The proposed renovation and adaptive use will provide new life for the building, a fine and handsome example of the work of one of the major shapers of Lexington's 19th-century built environment.

John McMurtry came to Lexington from Maryland with his family in 1833, when he was 20 years old. For more than half a century he was one of the most active builders and, probably mainly after the Civil War, architects in the central Bluegrass region. He was not an innovator in stylistic terms, he tended to mix generally small-scale elements derived from various 19th-century revival styles on each building, favoring, for instance, Gothic trefoil openings with Italianate brackets, and in his later works some Eastlake interior details: He was, however, inventive in terms of structural and functional systems, such as the hollow brick walls and the placement of the downstairs bathroom in the Watkins House, and patented several technological devices himself. All these characteristics are neatly combined in the Watkins House.

As a builder, particularly before the Civil War, McMurtry seems to have been associated with some of the best architects of the period, including not only the brilliant Major Thomas Lewinski of Lexington, but also A. J. Davis of New York, whose important Gothic Villa for Francis Key Hunt, "Loudoun" (now Castlewood) in Lexington McMurtry built shortly after 1850. McMurtry is believed to have disseminated the Gothic Revival throughout the Bluegrass, utilizing his experience with "Loudoun," as he had perhaps earlier spread the Greek Revival based on the work of Gideon Shryock and, in the 1840s and '50s, as well as after the Civil War, the gradations of Greek, Roman, and Italianate manners introduced and developed by Lewinski. In the 1870s and '80s, although he vehemently protested in the newspapers against the "newfangled Queen Anne craze", McMurtry did incorporate Eastlake and even perhaps at the very end slightly Richardsonian elements in his work. Although he generally kept to the townhouse and central-hall-plan types before the Civil War and to the T-plan for residences after the war, there are subtle variations according to site, scale, and the particular needs of the client, as is best represented by the Watkins House, designed and built for his daughter and son-in-law.

Among McMurtry's major construction projects were the early Lexington & Ohio railroad station in downtown Lexington (1834), several antebellum churches, Transylvania University's second Medical Hall (1834), the original Lexington Cemetery Gateway (1849-50), the Kentucky School for the Deaf in Danville (1855-57; designed by Lewinski), extensive additions to the Eastern State Lunatic Asylum in Lexington, the old Fayette National Bank Building (1872, with a Mansard roof), Floral Hall in the Red Mile complex (1880), and many large-scale distilleries, warehouses, and livery stables, as well as innumerable residences, some of them of impressive size and concept. Many of these structures he may have designed as well, particularly the more "functional" types and the residences after the war. Owner of a local iron foundry in 1855, McMurtry also was certainly an innovator in the use of cast iron, perhaps from a national as well as a local perspective; not only in details such as the pinnacles of Christ Church Episcopal (late 1840s), the Cemetery Gatehouse, and the Gothic villa, "Ingelside" (1852; formerly not far from the Watkins House, with iron hoodmolds as well), but also in full-scale castiron commercial facades such as that of the McAdams & Morford Drugstore Building ("Melodeon Hall"; early 1850s) and the Higgins Block in downtown Lexington (1871). Thus, in many ways McMurtry was one of the major contributors to the visual, institutional, and functional nature of the city and its surroundings throughout the central two-thirds of the 19^th century, and in many respects to the present.

The Watkins House, built in 1887, shortly before his death, summarizes many of the themes of McMurtry's career, as well as having a very personal quality, and reflects the changes that had occurred in his houses since the antebellum period, as Lancaster puts it: "formal symmetry having been replaced by an easy irregularity of plan, monumentality having given way to intimacy, yet without remarkable reduction in overall size, and correct archaeological motifs having been replaced by feely designed details executed simply in wood."

The dwelling was produced for McMurtry's daughter Anne and her husband, Thomas B. Watkins, who had been married in 1876. Watkins was, incidentally, a step-nephew of Henry Clay of "Ashland," and brother-in-law of Lewinski. Watkins was a shoe merchant, dealing in wholesale and retail boots and shoes. In 1892 he was described as having worked in Lexington for some 30 years, for several of the area's major firms. He was associated before 1885 with (Squire) Bassett & (William B.) Emmal. In 1885 Watkins became a partner of George E. Spencer in Watkins, Spencer & Co. (successors to Bassett & Emmal) which had been established in 1858), listed also as manufacturers and jobbers' agents. Thus Watkins was a member of a group of upwardly-mobile wholesale and retail merchants and manufacturers, connected by family and business ties. Watkins was also listed as a deputy sheriff of Fayette County in 1902.

Mrs. Watkins survived her husband by several decades, and the house remained in the family (although seldom occupied since World War II) until 1978. The property has changed hands several times in the last few years, but the new owners propose to restore and renovate the residence as office space, an appropriate use considering its location and size.

Building Description

The Watkins House, now isolated on fairly large grounds in an area of increasingly mixed-use south of downtown Lexington, is a two-story brick T-plan residence with stone lintels, frame porches, and a standing-seam-metal roof that is partially gabled but hipped at the rear. As is typical of the architect's work, the details include Italianate, Gothic Revival, and Eastlake elements, of relatively small scale in this case. Although the trim of the interior (some of it recently removed but replaceable) is consistent, the plan of the house gives it its distinction. The standard T-plan has been expanded in some areas, particularly the "Family Room," as it is designated on the surviving original plan, and the master bedroom above it, along with the adjacent downstairs nursery and bathroom, at the expense of the formal parlor, The public and private spaces, and several intermediary zones, are carefully articulated by archways, placement of doors, and corridors. The architect-builder also provided for his daughter's family several rather advanced structural and functional features.

The Watkins House is set on an ample lot on the southeast corner of the junction of two major (although small-scale) radial and circumambient thoroughfares south of downtown Lexington. It is located at the crossing of a major radial thoroughfare, South Broadway, and of a secondary cross-street, Virginia Avenue, that connects the University of Kentucky campus with the Red Mile Trotting Track and the Versailles Road on which the Keeneland Race Track is situated. There is a turn-of-the-century residential court to the north of the house, several tobacco or other one-story warehouses (with a railroad cut behind to the east), and access to the Red Mile Trotting Track opposite. The grounds have mostly been cleared, but retain some mature trees, overgrown plantings, terracing around the house, and a peripheral fence. With its gabled pavilions and dormers, brackets, lintels, Italianate porches, and Eastlake gable trim, the house has a nervous, yet vigorous aspect as it rises above the down-sloping grounds and adjacent streets. The present context has made the property all the more a local landmark, especially as few other residential buildings have remained in more than minimal grounds along the "strip" south from the city center to the outskirts.

The Watkins House is in many ways typical of its period, yet has several subtle distinctive features, probably derived from the architect's intimate knowledge of the needs and preferences of the clients, his daughter and son-in-law and their family. Basically a two-story brick T-plan house characteristic of the last third of the 19^th century in the Lexington area, the Watkins house seems to have been slightly distorted by functional requirements. This is perhaps best revealed by the plan, which was reproduced by Clay Lancaster before apparently being destroyed with other Watkins-McMurtry family papers.

Although emphasized on the exterior by its slight projection and forward gable, the northwest parlor wing on the left of the entrance is in fact relatively small, reflecting the segregation and formality of the parlor itself, which is not integrated with the rest of the first floor, but separated by the entrance hall on one side and on the other by the stairhall, which runs northward at a right angle to a side entrance facing Virginia Avenue. On the other hand, the "Family Room" as it is labeled, on the southwest corner, is definitely outsized, the major room in the house, along with the master bedroom above, whose size is perhaps even more startling, particularly in contrast to the slighted two other upstairs bedrooms. There is however, most unusually, a "Nursery" behind the Family Room, although whether it was intended as a playroom only, or as a sleeping chamber for the children, is unknown, Since, however, the original Bathroom is adjacent, it seems likely that the children also slept downstairs.

The dining room opposite the nursery on the northeast corner of the main block is conventional, although nicely located between the side and back verandas, and with windows on two sides. A door to the dining room under the main staircase leads from the north (probably family) entrance on the plan, but this seems to have been filled in quite early to provide a china closet, lit by one of the sidelights of the side entrance.

The kitchen and service facilities are well-thought-out, with a pantry and back staircase behind the bathroom, a separate lobby behind the dining room, and a pantry behind the dining room, leading onto the kitchen porch. The kitchen itself has tongue-in-groove wainscotting.

The entire first floor is carefully articulated in terms of public and private zones by the hall system. The front entrance porch (said to have been reduced in size from that shown on the plan because Mrs. Watkins did not want the family room shaded) opens into the formal front hall. This rather wide passage is lit by a window in a canted corner beside the door, which also has a large glass panel. Only the parlor on the left opens (through wide sliding doors) into this public space, which is defined by a broad three-centered arch. Behind the arch is the cross-hall containing the stair, with the door to the family room at the south end (right), thereby relating the family living room and the bedrooms upstairs, as well as the nursery, which opens off the family room, with its bathroom. Behind the stairhall is a narrower arch (with McMurtry's typical rounded plaster jambs) which defines the entrance to the dining room on the left, and provides access through a door to the back service hall. This is also somewhat articulated by tongue-in-groove wainscotting and unaligned axes. The three porches also reflect this hierarchy of use.

The second floor seems even more oddly personalized. It consists of only three rooms across the front, with only an attic over the dining room, nursery, and service area. This unfinished attic is reached by the backstairs; in the front corner, a bathroom with a dormer has apparently been inserted. Whether this area was intended to be expanded on future need, or the whole concept was simply designed for maximum show on the front, this arrangement makes a strangely truncated appearance on the back.

The three upstairs bedrooms, opening off a rather wide upper hall, repeat the pattern below, with the huge master bedroom over the family room, a middle-size bedroom over the parlor, and a small one over the front portion of the entrance hall. There are original closets to the left of the fireplace (on the inner wall) of the master bedroom, as well as in the family room below, and left of the dining-room fireplace.

The exterior of the house is also somewhat distinctive, both in its massing, which naturally follows that of the interior, and also in decorative as well as structural features. It is constructed of dark red brick. laid in a double wall system with courses of alternating headers and stretchers between each course of all-stretchers; this system, probably first used by McMurtry during the construction of "Loudon" in Castlewood Park in north Lexington in the early 1850s is shown specifically on the Watkins House plans, and occurs (although seldom with alternate courses) in other McMurtry buildings. The lintels and sills are of sandstone, with Gothic rosettes carved into the ends of the lintels beyond the frames, and two courses of slightly corbelled brick under the sills. The openings in the ell are segmental-arched. (The windows are single-pane sash, perhaps replacing the original two-over-two-pane sash.)

Slender paired eave-bracket define the bays, with pierced Gothic trim in the front gable, and shallow brackets over the canted corner of the slightly projecting entrance bay. This is accentuated by the single dormer above, which is bracketed and gabled above a continuous cornice. Behind the front block the roof over the first- story has a strangely ad hoc quality: a shallow north-south section with long roofs has a frame extension over the backstairs between the front block and the service ell. The latter has its own low-hipped roof.

The single bay front porch has square wooden posts, delicate early Gothic Revival openwork spandrels, and a dentillated cornice, as does the two-bay north entrance porch; the kitchen porch lacks the cornice, but has similar spandrels, which seem a little old-fashioned for the rest of the trim. The front door has a very large pane of glass and handsome Eastlake panels below; the side entrance has a more Italianate character, with a transom and sidelights retaining several panels of brightly colored etched glass. A partial basement is within the rear part of the stone foundations. The chimneys are paneled (although less elaborately than those of some of McMurtry's other later residences), and that on the north side of the parlor is corbelled out below the cornice on the second story.

Structurally the building seems to be quite stable, in spite of decades of minimal occupancy and recent vacancy and vandalism. It is now thoroughly boarded up.