Our Story

The Blue Grass Trust for Historic Preservation is a grassroots, membership-based nonprofit that serves as Central Kentucky’s resource for protecting, revitalizing, and promoting our historic places, enhancing the quality of life for all.

The Blue Grass Trust was founded in 1955 by a spirited group of Lexington citizens determined to save Hopemont from demolition. This group raised funds to purchase and restore Hopemont, an 1814 residence of the John Wesley Hunt family, located in Gratz Park. In 1958, due largely to this restoration, Gratz Park became Lexington's first local historic district. Today, Lexington has fifteen local historic districts. Still under our stewardship, Hopemont represents the birth of the preservation movement in Central Kentucky.

Over the years, the Blue Grass Trust has helped save many other historic structures, including the Dudley House, Shakertown of Pleasant Hill, the Adam Rankin House, Henry Clay’s Law Office, Belle Brezing’s Row Houses, the Mary Todd Lincoln House, the Stilfield Log House, Benjamin Latrobe’s Pope Villa, and most recently the Dr. Thomas Hunt Morgan House and Historic Palmer Pharmacy. The Blue Grass Trust also stewards three other properties: Latrobe's Pope Villa at 326 Grosvenor Avenue; the Endicott Cottage at 322 Grosvenor Avenue; and the Dr. Thomas Hunt Morgan House at 210 N. Broadway, which includes the H. Foster Pettit Auditorium and the offices of the Blue Grass Trust.

Now into our sixth decade, the Blue Grass Trust continues to provide valuable advocacy, education, and service to the preservation movement in Lexington, Central Kentucky, and throughout the state, ensuring the tangible and intangible benefits of preservation are accessible to every Central Kentuckian.