English: Built in 1854-1857, this Italianate-style mansion, known as Ashland, was designed by Thomas Lewinski for James Brown Clay, using the foundations and layout of an earlier house on the same site. The previous house was the home of Henry Clay, a planter and slaveowner, beginning in 1806, was built using slave labor, and had been expanded under the direction of Benjamin Henry Latrobe in 1811-1814. The original structure used porous brick, which led to structural problems, necessitating a reconstruction in the 1850s. The mansion remained in the Clay family until after James Brown Clay’s death in 1864, and it was sold by his widow, Susan Jacob Clay, to Kentucky University in 1866. The house was the residence of university founder John Bryan Bowman and housed the Kentucky University Natural History Museum until 1882, when the house was sold upon the split of Kentucky University into Transylvania University and the University of Kentucky. The house was then purchased by Anne Clay McDowell, the granddaughter of Henry Clay, and her husband, Henry Clay McDowell, in 1883, and remained home to their eldest daughter, Nannette McDowell Bullock, until her death in 1948. During the ownership by the McDowell family, the house was remodeled and modernized, with the installation of gas lamps, indoor plumbing, a telephone line, and electrical wiring. The surrounding estate was parceled off in the early 20th Century, and became home to the Ashland Park neighborhood, leaving the house in the middle of a large tree-filled grassy yard. Upon the death of Nannette in 1948, the house was transferred to the Henry Clay Memorial Foundation, which opened the house as a museum in 1950.

The house features three wings, with a two-story central wing flanked by two one-story wings, a layout that has remained consistent since the renovations undertaken by Latrobe in 1811-1814. Rising above a rough-hewn stone foundation, the red brick walls of the house are trimmed by quoins at the corners, and rise to the cornices with modillions at the base of the house’s gabled roof. The exterior of the house features four-over-four and two-over-three double-hung windows with arched upper sash and decorative stone trim surrounds, a Palladian window below the central front gable, a one-story projected entrance bay with a decorative trim surround at the front door below the front central gable, balconies with cast iron railings, large brick chimneys, cast iron porches at the side entrances, a two-story bay window on the rear facade of the two-story wing, and a stone terrace on the rear of the house, accessed via narrow french doors with fanlight transoms. Around the house are various outbuildings, most built of brick, which once functioned as part of a large-scale farm estate that surrounded the house until the early 20th Century. These buildings include a former Groundskeeper’s Cottage, built in 1846, two cylindrical partially underground icehouses with conical roofs, built circa 1830, a smokehouse, built between 1817 and 1882, and a privy and washhouse, which was built by James Clay in 1855-1856.

The house was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1966, and was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1960. Today, the house remains in use as a historical museum. The house is surrounded by grounds that are used as a public park, and feature ornamental trees and bushes, grassy lawns, winding paths, and formal gardens. Around the house is a neighborhood of curving streets lined with trees and houses, predominately built in the early 20th Century, which comprises the Ashland Park Historic District, listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1986.