Loudoun House in Castleton Park, Lexington,Fayette County

Located in Castleton Park, home of the Lexington Art League. Designed by A. J. Davis and built in 1852 for Frances Key Hunt of Lexington, this castellated Neo-Gothic villa is owned by the Lexington Fayette Urban County Government and is leased by LAL. Loudoun House is considered one of the largest and finest examples of Gothic Revival architecture in Kentucky. It reflects the Romantic Movement of the 1850s, which was a reflection of the social lifestyles and opulence of the day. The house follows a design of prominent New York architect Alexander Jackson Davis, who published his catalog of house designs, Rural Residences, in 1838. Davis' collaboration with author and horticulturist A. J. Downing was the foremost influence in disseminating the Gothic Revival style throughout the country. Loudoun was constructed by Lexington builder John McMurtry, who helped popularize the Gothic Revival style in the Bluegrass by constructing more than 200 buildings in this style

F. K. Hunt (1817-1879) was the son of John Wesley Hunt and grew up in the Hunt-Morgan House in Lexington. Named for his mother’s cousin, Francis Scott Key, the young Hunt was educated at Transylvania University in Lexington and the Episcopal Kenyon College in Gambier, Ohio. It was at Kenyon that Hunt was first introduced to Gothic Revival architecture, for the major academic building there was the earliest piece of collegiate Gothic Revival architecture in the United States. Returning to Lexington, Hunt practiced law and in 1840, married Julia Warfield, whose parents gave the couple 60 acres of suburban land on the Bryan Station Pike adjoining the Warfield estate. This land, called “The Meadows,” was to be the future site of Loudoun. Francis Hunt received the financial resources to build when he inherited more than a million dollars from his father, J. W. Hunt, who died in Lexington in 1849 during a serious cholera epidemic.