Your eyes meet the Hunt–Morgan House, historically called Hopemont, a Federal-style home here in Lexington, Kentucky. Built in 1814 by John Wesley Hunt — described here as the first millionaire west of the Alleghenies — this house anchors the Gratz Park Historic District. Pause and imagine the generations who passed through these doors: on the second floor is the Alexander T. Hunt Civil War Museum, a reminder of the family’s ties to history, and one of its most famous native sons, Thomas Hunt Morgan, was born in this very house in 1866 and went on to become the first Kentuckian to win the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.
The front façade still presents the elegant Palladian window with fan and sidelights that characterize its design. In 1955 the Blue Grass Trust for Historic Preservation was formed to save this home from impending demolition, and that organization restored it to its Federal appearance. Notice the Palladian window with its fan and sidelights on the façade at 201 N. Mill Street, the corner of Mill and Second.