it is certainly something i've heard from people. i want to thank pioneer for doing all this. all of us look at the newspapers every day and the world has gone to hell. pioneer is really doing something against partisanship and in examining all kinds of subjects. an i think we owe a great debt to pioneer for what they do to help society. thank you all. [applause] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. visit ncicap.org] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2015] >> with live coverage of the u.s. house on c-span and the senate on c-span2, on c-span3 we show you the most relevant congressional hearings and public affairs events. on weekends, c-span3 is the home to american history tv. with programs that tell our nation's story. including the civil war's 150th anniversary, american

artifacts, history bookshelf the presidency, lectures and history, and our new series reel america, featuring archival films from the 1930's-19 70's. c-span3 created by the cable tv industry and funded by your local cable or satellite provider. watch as an hd, like us on facebook and follow us on twitter. >> all weekend long, american history tv is joining our time warner communications cable partners to showcase the history of lexington, kentucky. to learn more about the cities in our 2015 tour, visit c-span.org/citiestour. we continue with our look at the history of lexington.

tom: this house was designed by benjamin henry latrobe. it is one of only three domestic structures designed by him and built that are still standing in the country. you might be familiar with latrobe he was an english architect that immigrated to america in the early 1800s and was immediately hired by thomas jefferson to do architectural work on the capitol and the white house. he never came to lexington. he and senator pope and mrs. pope met in washington. john pope was a one term senator. they picked him because mrs. pope had grown up in england she was familiar with british architecture. she admired latrobe's work. she talked to him more so than mr. pope about her needs for this house.

they did not live in this house very long. they only kept occupancy about five or six years. they moved to other places. they rented the house out for quite a while and eventually sold it in the 1830's. this was a privately owned, it had a bad fire in 1987. the roof burned off the house and the chimneys collapsed. the bluegrass trust was able to acquire it in late 1988 and put a temporary roof on the structure. we continue to work on the house today. it is not finished. we are taking our time and going slowly, trying to do the right restorations. this is a true federal style. it is a very unusual house in that it is inverted. it has an english raised basement. the living quarters are on the second floor. the entirely opposite of almost

every other american house of the period. latrobe's influence is so obvious. when we go in the house, we will talk about some of those. we are in the front hall of the pope villa. we call it a villa because it was a suburban property on 11 acres of land. we are in the front hall looking at this poster, which depicts all of the various versions of the house that have gone on through the years. here's the original design first and second floor. here's the house in the 1840's after a two-story kitchen addition was built there. then a much later version where there were more additions outback. apartment after apartment. i cannot picture how these ten apartments can out of a one-family house, but they did. we are now in what is known as mrs. pope's parlor. she would take tea here.

planned the day's events when the popes were in residence. she would assign the butler and cook the duties for the day. anything to do with running the house, mrs. pope handled. we are now entering what is known as the butler's area. the butler would have had a service staircase. it burned away during our bad 1987 fire. the staircase would have allowed the butler to transport the food to the second floor, where the dining room is. we will see that space shortly. if you were a visitor to the pope villa in the early 1800s you would not have seen this area. it is completely closed off. it contained a couple of service veterans, the kitchen the butler's work area. again, all of this was concealed . if you've visited here, you

would not normally be in this space at all. we are now in a room that used to be two rooms. these were very small servants' quarters. they were divided at one time. you can see a faint line where there was a dividing wall. there would have been a small bedroom here, a solid wall, a second small bedroom. only one room would have had a fireplace. this area represents something that is completely different from most american homes. it was highly unusual, especially in the american south, to have enslaved african american servants housed in the house itself. often times, servants were housed in separate quarters in the backyard. or perhaps in the basement. latrobe, being from england, was not used to the segregation of

the races. they had servants, indentured servants in england. but latrobe did not go along with the idea of separating the enslaved african-americans physically from the property of their owners. we are and what is the main hallway of the pope villa, the stair hall. we might mention a bit about the engine henry latrobe -- benjamin henry latrobe. he came to america in the early 1800s. evidence suggests he moved to the americas to escape that debt -- bad debt in england. the laws did not really pursue people if they left one country and went to another. we are pretty short latrobe escaped his bad debts in england

and was able to start afresh in america. we might also pause to look at what, an image we see in the plaster on the wall in front of us. it very clearly in the -- illustrates the shadow of a railing you could hang onto as you climbed the stairs. there is some discussion still going on about the position of the stair. there is an old story that senator pope as a child had lost his right arm in a farming accident as a young man. since he was left-handed, this arrangement would let him climbed the stairs with the help of his left hand on the other banister. the floor plan seems to show that a stair existed against this wal\l, just the reverse it

we have not come to congress conclusions about which way the stair was positioned. we are now upstairs in the main living quarters of the house. and here is the surprise -- here is this hidden room, hidden from the street. you do not have any idea a room like this is in the house until you come inside and come to the second floor. this room was a domed rotunda with a skylight, an oculus in the middle. the oculist lit the room. the room is circular, even the woodwork fits the circular room. the dome is mostly gone now. we have various remnants of it in storage. but it was plastered, painted sky blue to the -- to

imitate the outdoor sky. the oculus gave the appearance of having leached. the interior of the dome was painted sky blue. the walls, we do not know if the original color was here. there is some evidence the walls were painted pink. what we are looking at here is the beginning of several surprises on this floor. there's an arched statuary niche. you would have put a marble or plaster statue here to add some artwork to the scene. there is a matching niche that was over here on this side. however, it appears to have originally held an iron heating stove. tehen we enter the two main areas of the house, the dining room and the parlor.

the big surprise here is these two rooms with gigantic 14 foot ceilings, curved walls, there were twin curved walls that butted to each other. you had a single door from the dining room to the parlor. these had a complete plaster cornice, most of which has fallen away. we still have ample evidence to reproduce it. we have here some remnants of an original 1812 wallpaper, it is called rocky road. it has been reproduced. all of our wallpaper samples have been preserved cataloged they are in storage at the university of kentucky. we fully documented every scrap of wallpaper we could find. many people used to think these 1812-style federal houses were

woodwork, not the case at all. they were mostly richly decorated with wall paper and vibrant paint. we would like for you to see these two remnants we found in the rear of the house. these are pieces of what we think are part of an original 1812 mantle. these are all wooden pieces. very likely the original mantles in these two great rooms in the front of the house contained something like this 1812 wooden mantle with rich handcart thing. -- handcarving. the black marble are from the 1840's remodeling. they are quite old. our philosophy has been that we

not replaced something like this unless we have good evidence for what was originally here. there is an awful lot of preparation work, documentary evidence. we have one of the largest historic structures reports that has ever been created for an american property. nothing like the white house or the capitol but for a domestic building we probably have the most complex and complete domestic structures, historic structures report on record. we've struggled for years to come up with a good end use. we think we might be close to one. we are talking to some potential tenants who might be able to rehab some of the rooms and use them as office space while maintaining the three big important architectural rooms for people to continue to view. this house is important to the bluegrass trust because of latrobe's influence on american

architecture. its historic importance, senator pope was one of the first senators from the state of kentucky. he and his wife were very influential in washington politics. we have, we think, a national importance as well as a state importance. >> throughout the weekend american history tv is featuring lexington, kentucky. our staff traveled there to learn about its rich history. learn more about lexington and other stops on the tour at c-span.org/cities.tour. you are watching american history tv. >> you are watching american history tv. 48 hours of programming on american history every weekend on seas and three.

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