Some Old Woodford County Homes
The Woodford Sun Thursday, May 19, 1949
Some Old Woodford County Homes
[description of The Dupuy House]
The Muldrow House
The last of the early homes to be discussed will be that of Colonel
Andrew Muldrow, built about 1817, on Grier's Creek, one mile from
Sublett's Ferry where it empties into the Kentucky River.
Colonel Muldrow was a legislator and state senator, trustee of Grier's
[ text missing] Church, built in 1817, and a busy man of affairs, with
his large body of lands and mills on the creek.
He built for himself what was more nearly a mansion than were most of
these early homes. Again the materials used took form in grace and
beauty, and the modified brick colonial house created has given pleasure
to subsequent generations.
The red brick house is on a high hill, probably one hundred and fifty
feet above the turnpike, and Grier's Creek, flowing with gentle murmur
between its gate and the road, has to be crossed before one can make the
steep ascent to its yard. The story-and-a-half house sets back from the
fence about one hundred feet, and is a broad roomy structure - a central
hall, twenty feet wide and more than fifty feet long, almost of baronial
proportions for this country - with two twenty-foot square rooms on either
side - four rooms and the hall comprising the first floor. The ceilings
are fourteen feet high, giving an air of spaciousness to the interior.
There were once two stairways one on each side at the end of the long
hall in alcoves, not [cant' read] in the hall, but reached from it by a doorway
into each alcove.
The hall was thus left with its stately beauty and length unbroken.
In its center was an elaborately hand-carved arch, and the door frames
and chair rail were also hand carved. The woodwork was all white, except
the doors which were grained in oak. The double oaken doors at either
end had side lights, and a fan light above each.
In the parlor was a beautiful carved high mantel, a perfect sunburst of
carving across the long panel in front, while each little molding was
carved in an intricate and beautiful design.
The space underneath the windows on each side the mantel was paneled to
the floor, and the one window in the front wall was of Palladian design,
that graceful three-fold opening, the center wide, with rounded top,
the sidelights narrower and straight. It seems strange to think of
workmen of that time in this newly settled region being able to reproduce
so faithfully this graceful feature of Palladio, an Italian architect,
the first to soften the austere outlines of buildings with curved ones,
the window of his invention taking his name. In the other front room is
also a Paladian window, and a carved mantel.
The woodwork of the front porch between the four columns is curved or
fluted in form, and the seven or eight stone steps are semi-circular in
shape, while the window in the attic room, extending over the porch is
fan shaped.
Everywhere the softening curves, to modify the severity of the early
colonial style, the result being that graciousness of outline so pleasing
to the eye.
A side porch on which both the family room and the dining room opened,
connected with the brick kitchen by an open passage or "dog-trot,"
the early builders not seeming to mind if the kitchen was a front room,
if it was only the proper distance from the main house.
A very substantial two-room stone house, probably an office, was also
at one side of the front yard.
There was a garden back of the house, with flower beds, roses and fruit
trees, a latticed summer house in the center, and with vegetables growing
modestly in the rear.
In this day of the revival of antiques it is easy to furnish these fine
homes with the quaint and handsome mahogany, the heavy damask draperies,
the triple mantel mirrors in heavy gilt frames, reflecting the candelabra,
fascinating from the prismatic lights of their glasses, and the portraits,
silhouettes, etc., of that day, also to imagine the soft-topped velvet
carpets and rag floor coverings of the time.
Back of the Muldrow home in an old graveyard on the hillside Colonel
Muldrow, his wife Rachel Worley, and their only son lie buried, under the
heavy stones of that time. The one over the son still records in pathetic
verse the grief at his loss, and his death left his widowed mother, amidst
all the luxury and comfort with which she was surrounded, in the old home.
The Dupuy and Muldrow houses are beloved of architects as showing the
highest skill of early planners and builders.
Views of both were shown in an illustrated lecture on "Early architecture
in Kentucky" given by Prof. Rexford Newcomb of the University of Illinois
before the Woman's Club of Central Kentucky in Lexington, September 1928,
and several days later at Kentucky State University.
Professor Newcomb heads the department of the History of Architecture
in the University of Illinois, and previous to his lecture had spent
many months in the past three years in a thorough study of Kentucky
architecture, for the purpose of writing a book. I have never been able
to recall whether these two were the only houses shown from Woodford
County, as I was too excited and delighted to remember anything more when
these two old favorites appeared on the screen, and both from our Grier's
Creek neighborhood! And two views of the Muldrow house were given!
It will be seen from this review of a very small part of this section of
Woodford County, what splendid men were among these early settlers, and
I trust that some of the gifted writer of this chapter will be incited
by this slight narrative to take up the history of other families, the
Raileys and Rowlands, the Wilsons, Whites and Woolridges, the Fraziers
and Goughs, to mention on a few [article may continue - cut off from here]
