In 1880, a Lexington architect at the apex of his Bluegrass practice took the commission for a three-story brick hotel on North Main Street in Versailles. His name was Phelix L. Lundin — and his portfolio that year spanned three counties.
Why this matters
The Woodford Hotel is the most operationally continuous surviving building in Phelix L. Lundin’s documented Bluegrass portfolio. The 1879–80 commissions that bracket the Woodford — Lexington’s first purpose-built City Hall, the Maria Dudley House at Gratz Park, and the Clark County National Bank in Winchester — set the architectural and cultural context in which Major W. J. Stitt’s hotel was built.
The 1975 National Register nomination form for the Downtown Versailles Historic District recorded the architect as “P. J. Lunden of Lexington.” Independent later National Register nominations — for Winchester (1982), Lexington’s Downtown Commercial District (1983), and individual Lexington buildings — consistently spell the architect’s name Phelix L. Lundin. This page uses the corrected spelling throughout.
A short biography (with hedges)
Phelix L. Lundin — identified in regional architectural-history sources as a Swedish-born or Swedish-trained architect — practiced in Lexington and the surrounding Bluegrass region from the late 1870s until approximately the mid-1880s. His earliest documented Lexington commission is Jackson Hall, the city’s new Market House, the plans for which he submitted in 1879; his latest documented commissions cluster in 1880–82.
The biographical record is thin on origin and death dates and is hedge-required pending direct archival pulls: the R. L. Polk 1875-76 Lexington City Directory contains no listing for him, suggesting his Lexington arrival post-dates 1876; his disappearance from the directory record after 1885 is consistent with a death year in the mid-1880s but is not yet confirmed by a primary obituary or interment record.
What is firmly documented is his portfolio. In an ~18-month window in 1879–80, Lundin took on the design of a major civic building, an architecturally distinctive prestige residence, a regional hotel, and a bank later called “the finest in the state outside of Louisville.” That four-commission window is the architectural moment in which the Woodford Hotel was built.
The 1879–80 Bluegrass portfolio
The portfolio below uses three confidence tiers: Verified for direct primary-source attribution; Likely for Tier-2 preservation-society or qualified NRHP attribution; Disputed or Hedge where the record is contested or incomplete.
Jackson Hall (Lexington Market House & City Hall)
Verified Lundin submitted plans for the city’s new Market House — to house the council chamber on its second floor — in 1879. The cornerstone was laid in late July; the city occupied the building in May 1880. It served as Lexington’s combined market and city hall for sixty years.
Maria Dudley House
Likely Built for Mrs. Maria B. Dudley in what had been the side yard of the Hunt-Morgan House. Per the Gratz Park Neighborhood Association: “designed by architect Phelix Lundin… Victorian Eclectic in style, featuring an octagonal tower and etched glass at the entry.”
The Woodford Hotel
Verified Three-story brick Italianate; seven bays wide; triangular pedimented hoodmolds at the third floor; segmental arched moldings at the second floor; Italianate cornice brackets. Twenty-eight rooms (per the July 29, 1881 opening advertisement in the Woodford Sun). The first building in Versailles erected expressly for a hotel.
Commissioned by the Woodford Hotel Company — a Kentucky corporation chartered by act of the General Assembly with the express power “to construct a Hotel in the town of Versailles” — incorporated by Major W. J. and Mary A. Stitt, who had operated the predecessor Versailles House on the same block since 1865. Recorded in the 1975 National Register nomination form for the Downtown Versailles Historic District — the same form that preserves the “P. J. Lunden” transcription error this page corrects.
Clark County National Bank
Verified Modified Renaissance Revival with classical detailing on a cast-iron front. The 1982 Winchester Downtown Commercial District National Register nomination form records: “designed by Phelix Lundin, a Lexington architect in 1880. Supporters of the building in 1880 claim it was at the time the finest bank building in the state outside of Louisville.”
Randall Building (Bogaert’s Jewelry)
Likely Italianate-Victorian commercial brick; tall narrow arched windows; ornate cornice; NRHP-contributing building within the Lexington Downtown Commercial District. Attributed to Lundin as “possibly Phelix L. Lundin, Italianate” in the 1983 NRHP nomination form prepared by Walter E. Langsam and Richard S. DeCamp.
Phoenix Hotel rebuild
Hedge required (stylistically consistent) The 1879 rebuild of the Phoenix Hotel — Lexington’s preeminent nineteenth-century hostelry — has been attributed in some local architectural sources to Phelix L. Lundin. The stylistic vocabulary visible in late-1890s photographs of the rebuilt building — triangular pedimented hoodmolds at the third floor, segmental arched moldings at the second floor, and a paired-bracket Italianate cornice — is the same distinctive vocabulary Lundin used the following year at the Woodford Hotel in Versailles and at the late-1870s Randall Building on Lexington’s West Main.
Pending direct Lexington Transcript 1879 microfilm verification, the Phoenix rebuild is best framed as stylistically consistent with Lundin’s documented 1879–80 Bluegrass portfolio rather than as a Verified attribution.
Image: late-1890s view of the Phoenix Hotel — reproduced from the Phoenix Park historical marker, Lexington, KY. Photo by Cosmos Mariner via the Historical Marker Database, hmdb.org marker #119116.
1880 Land Conveyance & Construction
The documentary record from corporate land acquisition to opening day takes four months and seventeen months respectively, and ties Phelix L. Lundin’s design work to one of the densest commission runs of his Bluegrass practice.
Three facts the deed locks down for the Pillar IV record:
- Mary A. Stitt was the title-holder. The land sat in her separate estate — the nineteenth-century Kentucky pattern under the Married Women’s Property Act. Her husband, Major W. J. Stitt, joined the deed; her trustee, H. W. Stitt, executed it on her behalf.
- The grantee was a state-chartered corporation. The Woodford Hotel Company had been incorporated, by act of the Kentucky General Assembly, in the months immediately before March 8, 1880, with the express purpose “to construct a Hotel in the town of Versailles.” Identifying the incorporation act (1879-80 Acts of the Kentucky General Assembly) is a current archival priority.
- The 1880 neighbor record at Lot No. 22 is preserved in the deed itself. Johnson Miller bounded the parcel on the south; A. G. Berry on the north; Jesse Porter on the east. The conveyed parcel fronts Main Street and runs ~110 feet deep.
Four months after the conveyance, in July 1880, the foundation was laid. Seventeen months after the conveyance, in July 1881, the Woodford Hotel opened — twenty-eight rooms, three stories of brick Italianate, seven bays wide, the first building in Versailles erected expressly for a hotel.
Connecting Lundin to the Woodford Hotel
Major and Mary Stitt did not pick an unknown name. In 1879 and 1880, Phelix L. Lundin was simultaneously executing the largest civic commission Lexington had let in a generation, a prestige residence in the city’s most historic neighborhood, and — within months of breaking ground in Versailles — a bank in Winchester that contemporaries would call the finest in Kentucky outside Louisville. The Woodford Hotel was one of four commissions in an eighteen-month run that established Lundin as a working master of Bluegrass commercial and civic architecture.
The Italianate brick three-story with segmental arched second-floor moldings, triangular pedimented third-floor hoodmolds, and a paired-bracket Italianate cornice that anchors North Main Street in Versailles is a direct stylistic cousin of Lundin’s Lexington commercial work on West Main. The same architect was working both Main Streets in the same year, in the same vocabulary, for the same drummer-and-distillery economy of the central Bluegrass.
1880 construction timeline — from the Woodford Sun
The Woodford County Historical Society holds the Woodford Sun “Versailles House” folder, which preserves the local newspaper’s month-by-month coverage of the build. The primary-source record:
- January 9, 1880 — Joint stock company project announced. Shares $50 each. 150+ shares already taken. Building to commence when $10,000 is subscribed.
- February 27, 1880 — Stockholders meeting called for the courthouse to elect officers.
- March 5, 1880 — Officers elected. H. C. McLeod chosen President; D. J. Williams, Rob’t McConnel, John H. McKenzie, R. B. George, and Henry Landsberg elected Directors.
- March 8, 1880 — Mary A. Stitt conveys Lot No. 22 to the Woodford Hotel Company for $3,000 (the deed referenced above).
- March 12, 1880 — Officers met at H. C. McLeod’s law office. All present except Landsberg (absent in New York). Resolved to immediately communicate with competent architects.
- March 26, 1880 — “The officers of the Woodford Hotel Company have engaged P. L. Lundin, the architect of Lexington, to prepare a plan.”
- April 9, 1880 — Lundin presents his design in person. Approved by the company. Specification: three stories, 28 rooms (the plan was later expanded to 28), modern hotel appliances, convenient office, large billiard room, bath rooms, front entrance to office, ladies’ entrance leading to a hall with stairway to the second-floor parlor.
- June 4, 1880 — “The old hotel building is now a thing of the past. If its walls could speak they could unfold some very interesting tales.” The predecessor Versailles House is demolished.
- June 25, 1880 — The Woodford Hotel Company decides to place the new building twelve feet from Miller’s building. Foundation work begins. (Miller is Johnson Miller, the south neighbor named in the March 8 deed.)
- July 23, 1880 — “The foundation for the new hotel building is being placed on the solid rock about eight feet below the surface of the ground. The building will be a substantial one.”
- October 14, 1880 — Tom Wilson, the master brick-mason on the build, dies of declining health (see tribute below).
- December 17, 1880 — “Work on the hotel building has been in progress this week. The brick work is now about completed.” Hotel Company stock certificates available for pickup at Amsden’s (the 1880 Versailles institution whose name continues today, one block south, in Amsden Bourbon Bar).
- July 29, 1881 — OPENING DAY. The Woodford Sun runs the proprietor’s advertisement: “NEW HOTEL! Just Open AND READY FOR BUSINESS! Built upon the site of the Old Versailles House. Main Street, Versailles, Kentucky. New building of twenty-eight rooms, handsomely furnished… Office, Reception Room, Reading Room on first floor. Three large rooms prepared for the exhibition of samples, especially for the accommodation of commercial travellers. Bar-Room in connection with hotel provided with choice liquors, cigars, &c. W. J. Stitt, Proprietor.“
Seventeen months from deed to opening day. The building stands today on the same foundation, eight feet below grade on solid limestone bedrock, twelve feet from where Miller’s building stood in 1880.
Sources & further reading
- March 8, 1880 warranty deed — Mary A. Stitt, W. J. Stitt, H. W. Stitt (trustee) to the Woodford Hotel Company, conveying the middle portion of Lot No. 22, Versailles, for $3,000. Tier-1 primary source establishing the corporate purpose, title structure, price, parcel, and 1880 neighbor record. Recorded in the Woodford County Clerk’s Deed Book (volume and page pending direct verification).
- 1975 National Register Nomination Form, Downtown Versailles Historic District (NRHP #75000844) — records the Woodford Hotel architect as “P. J. Lunden of Lexington.”
- 1982 National Register Nomination Form, Winchester Downtown Commercial District (NRHP #82002681) — Tier-1 federal record naming “Phelix Lundin, a Lexington architect” as designer of the 1880 Clark County National Bank.
- “Lexington, Kentucky’s City Hall,” The Kaintuckeean (Peter Brackney, 2018) — transcribes the 1879 Lexington Transcript naming Phelix Lundin as architect of the new Market House.
- Maria Dudley House — Gratz Park Neighborhood Association — attributes the c. 1879 townhouse to “architect Phelix Lundin.”
- The Warwick Compound and the Octagon — Warwick Foundation — Clay Lancaster’s legacy site on Floral Hall (disputed attribution).
- Winchester Downtown Commercial District — Wikipedia
- 1891 Sanborn Fire Insurance Map, Versailles, KY (Library of Congress) — Hotel Woodford footprint and first-floor uses.
Every fact on this page is anchored to a National Register nomination, a preservation society file, or a contemporary newspaper transcribed by named architectural-history scholarship. Where a source is disputed (Floral Hall) or unverified (Phoenix Hotel rebuild), the page says so. The corrected spelling of the architect’s name — Phelix L. Lundin — is established by three independent National Register nominations and is the form used in current preservation scholarship.