Farmington

About this property

Farmington, an 18-acre (7.3 ha) historic site in Louisville, Kentucky, United States, was once the center of a hemp plantation owned by John and Lucy Speed. The 14-room, Federal-style brick plantation house was possibly based on a design by Thomas Jefferson and has several Jeffersonian architectural features. As many as 64 African Americans were enslaved by the Speed family at Farmington. The Farmington site was part of a military land grant given to Captain James Speed in 1780. His son, John Speed, completed Farmington on a tract of land in 1816. Built in the Federal architectural style, the house is based on plans by Thomas Jefferson, which are now in the Coolidge Collection at the Massachusetts Historical Society. Speed built the house for his wife, Lucy Gilmer Fry, daughter of Joshua Fry and granddaughter of Dr. Thomas Walker, the guardian of Thomas Jefferson. Her aunt and uncle's home in Charlottesville, Virginia was called Farmington and had an addition designed by Thomas Jefferson. Their son, Joshua Fry Speed, was an intimate, lifelong friend of Abraham Lincoln. While courting Mary Todd, Lincoln spent three weeks at Farmington in 1841 while recovering from mental and physical exhaustion. It was during this visit to Farmington in 1841 that Abraham Lincoln witnessed slavery on a plantation first-hand and he saw enslaved people chained together after he boarded a steamboat at the Louisville waterfront. In an 1855 letter to Joshua Speed, Lincoln wrote that the scene had continued to torment him. John and Lucy's son, James Speed, was appointed Attorney General of the United States by Lincoln in 1863. Farmington consists of a single story above a raised basement. The building is roughly a square shape, measuring 62 feet (19 m) wide by 50 feet (15 m) long. There are 14 rooms of living quarters on the first floor, with servant's and children's rooms on the basement floor. The first story is about five feet above ground level, with the basement windows completely above ground. All rooms in the basement are finished. A simplified classical cornice under the hipped roof helps give the house its pleasing, proportional appearance. The front entrance is a tetrastyle portico (porch) with slender Doric columns, reached by 11 steps. The porch's gable features a semi-circular ventilation window. The front door opens into a central hall which has a door at the back leading to a rear hall. These two halls give access to all rooms on the first floor, as well as stairs to the basement and attic. The stairs are hidden, which is a common feature of homes designed by Jefferson. A notable feature of the first floor are two 24-foot (7.3 m) wide octagonal rooms, another distinctive feature of Jeffersonian architecture. One of the octagonal rooms is a dining hall, the other is a parlor. Other rooms on the first floor are two bedrooms, a study and a family sitting room.

Location

Categories

Property data from the National Register of Historic Places, National Park Service (public domain).

Description adapted from Wikipedia under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

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