INNES (PINDELL) HOUSE

471 W. 2nd St., Lexington, Fayette County, Kentucky
Built 1839

A century ago (March 1839), Richard Pindell bought a lot here from the trustees of the Episcopal Theological Seminary and erected this attractive house.

The deed from the trustees (Rt. Rev. B.B. Smith, Prof. Wm. Iucho, Edward Macalester, Wm. M. Brand, Dr. John Ward and Wm. Jackson) stated that the frontage was 76½ feet extending back 348 feet "to the factory of James Hamilton" and adjoined on the west "the lot this day conveyed by the trustees to James Conquest Cross." It was part of a four-acre lot that Col. Josiah Dunham had conveyed as a gift to the seminary the year before.

Col. Dunham's deed of gift, by the way, was interesting. It read in part: "Beginning at the westernmost cor. of the Seminary Grounds on which the Seminary buildings now stand, thence , running N.W. on a line with the road leading from the 1st Presbyterian Meeting House and Main Cross St. to Robert Wickliffe's." [At that time] Second Street was no more than a road, with board fences flanking it.

Richard Pindell sold the house September 15, 1847, to Henry C. Pindell, who conveyed it August 10, 1853, to Mrs. Courtney Pickett and Wm. D. Pickett.

On May 1, 1858, the "lot on which Mrs. Pickett now resides" was sold by her and W.D. Pickett (of Memphis, Tenn.) to Robert Innes, in whose family it remained for 40 years.

In 1896 the house was deeded to the widow, Catherine A. Innes, of Louisville, Ky." by Martha A. Gist and her husband, Geo. W. Gist, of Henry County, Ky., for "relinquishment of all claims" and a transfer of a 225 acre farm in Henry County.

In conveying this house to Mrs. Innes, the deed said it was the same "conveyed to Robert Gist by Courtney Pickett and Wm. D. Pickett." They included also the "lot on the north side of 2nd St. now rented to the City of Lexington for public school purposes."

Mrs. Innes' heirs and executors conveyed the house to T.T. Forman two years after the above deed was made.

The classical portico is the work of the famous architect, Gideon Shryock. It came from the old Dunlap home on Walnut Street (razed to build the present handsome City Hall).

Source: Old Houses of Lexington, C. Frank Dunn, typescript, n.d., copy located in the Kentucky Room, Lexington (Kentucky) Public Library.

Transcribed by pb, October 2006