Sometimes when you look for one thing – you find something else! While shuffling through years of emails earlier today, I found this photograph of a handsome historic house in Bourbon County, Kentucky. The email was dated 2011, but I can’t claim to know the date of the photograph. It may well be the original survey photo, in which case it dates from the late 1970s and the photographer was William Gus Johnson.
Façade of Forest Grove, Bourbon County, Kentucky.
Forest Grove, located on the Paris-Cynthiana Road, was built after the Civil War in the wildly popular Italianate style.* The house was built for Dr. Noah S. Moore, who was doing very well indeed for himself to have this house – an elaborate brick house channeling ideas of Italian villas – constructed. The symmetry, the graceful arched porches, and the combination of brackets and quoins (and those are not stone – the brick is simply painted) combine to make the dwelling an arresting sight on the rural landscape.
Section of the 1877 Atlas of Bourbon, Clark, Fayette, Jessamine and Woodford Counties, Ky.
I have not done any looking into this property, save for checking my trusty “Green Book” to confirm its name. (One of my resolutions for 2023 is to share more via blog posts, and that means short posts without hours of research. So you get to see the picture and share in my musing, but I don’t dig for the answers.) The house looks slightly dejected in this photograph, and I hope that the intervening decades have been kinder to it – if it stands at all?
*Picturesque names were all the rage in the 19th century. Looking at an 1861 map, the names are lyrical, often wooded in nature, and likely self-aggrandizing. There’s Sunny Side, New Forest, Woodbrook, Pleasant Home, Rose Lawn, Mount Alpine…you get the idea.
Might call it the “House of Quoins”!! Look forward to hearing more about it.
For your last two blogs, I have not received any photos. The one today clearly had captions but no photos. Do you know what could be causing that?
Thanks.
John Hackworth
Janie-Rice,
Never mind. The photos just came in.
Thanks.
John
What an interesting find, I so hope it is still among us. The bow window is distinctive, those painted bricks make the window look either unusual or idiosyncratic. The central projection of the facade looks rather heavy with the quoins and bow window features. The frail/delicate arches of the porch are almost fun since they are small and not quite the same as the rest of the facade.
Thank you for your blog!!
It is still standing! And thank you for reading Eileen!
This does indeed look like it was taken about the time of the survey for the green book. The house deteriorated considerably more after that, but, when many of us had despaired of its survival, the late Ben Ardery bought it and did a marvelous job of restoring it.
This makes me so happy.
Financed no doubt by windfall farming profits during the just concluded war…..like more than one Italinate house in the county.
Forest Grove still stands and was thoroughly restored by Ben Ardery. I’ll take a picture for you tomorrow. I don’t know who owns it now.
Thank you Rogers!
When I lived in Bourbon County on Clay-Kiser in the ’90s I watched this house deteriorate and mourned. My grandfather (1904-1992) had told me stories of visiting there in his day.
I was relieved when Ardery bought it and started the renovation process around the time we moved away.
I hope it’s still being loved and used. Anxious for the photo update Mr. Barde.
What a gorgeous house. Painted quoins! Wonder if it is still there?
It is still standing and was restored several years ago!
Hurrah! That is a victory!
Just love the work you do Janie-Rice!
Thank you so much!