Hall's present 40-acre landscape design includes a system of springs and spring-fed lakes that are crossed by a small bridge. Trees include three bald cypress examples that grew from seedlings brought by the Wards from their plantations in the Mississippi Delta. A winding lane leads to the house. Behind the house is the setting of a terraced garden.

There is probably no other house in the Bluegrass that represents the height of the Greek Revival period more elegantly. Built on the Corinthian order, its two-story tetra-style portico has columns forty feet high that support a deep, pedimented entablature. Pilasters with Corinthian capitals ornament all four sides of the house, which is seventy-five feet square. The interior carries out the attention to detail with plaster cornices rich with decorations of egg-and-dart and bead-and-reel patterns and anthemion blossoms. The woodwork is rubbed walnut, and a gracious winding staircase ascends to the third floor.

Ruins on the site represent a former slave house, outhouse, stable/carriage house, and garden site. Below-surface foundations exist for other out and service buildings.

Window and door frames are carved stone. The very high basement is faced with scored and bush-hammered ancient limestone blocks.

The front portico is reached by ten stone steps flanked by paneled carved antepodia, and supports 40 foot fluted columns reaching to Corinthian capitals of cast iron supporting the denticulated entablature and pediment. The copper roof and copper water tank were sold during World War 1.

Pilasters with Corinthian capitals flank the bays. End bays on the sides of Ward Hall have blind windows which provided for closets and shelving for the interior.

The basement has a brick herringbone paved center passage, kitchen with dumb waiter, work areas, and quarter. Some flooring is wooden, some brick. Openings have Greek-eared enframements.

The original 25-foot wide center passage with ash floors led from the front and back entrance. Woodwork is hand-finished walnut and hardware is Sheffield silver plate. Molded plaster cornices and centerpieces retain their original pastel tints. Floors are ash. To the left are parlors with Sheffield chandeliers, carved marble mantels, and the dining room with the dumb waiter. On the right side of the hall are the library (with shelves in blind windows' enclosures), the elliptical 3-story "chambered nautilus" staircase; the side entrance hall and bathrooms originally supplied from the roof top reservoir, and a chamber bedroom.

The 25-foot central hall is flanked by chambers, uses of which included bedrooms. The room at the top of the rear stairs may have been quarters for servants and guest.

Attic entrances are enframed by a design from Miniard Lefever's Young Builders General Instructor.

Surveyors in 1774 staked out the first land grants in the Elkhorn country in the name of the British crown-for veterans of the French and Indian War during the summer of 1774. Two tracts (2,000 and 3,000 acres) assigned to Patrick Henry, lay adjacent to each other just west of present Georgetown on both sides of present US460. In 1780 Henry assigned the grants to Robert Johnson. Historic home of those individuals survive on the surrounding landscape, much of which continues to be actively farmed.

 

In the winter of December 1783 the Johnsons and several families from Bryan Station moved into their completed fortified station near the large buffalo road crossing described in Henry's survey. We know it as Great Crossing. Robert and Jemima Sugget Johnson were progenitors of one of America's great political dynasties that included.

Richard M. Johnson(1780-1850), the first native Kentuckian elected to the state legislature (1804), US Congress (1807) an US Senate (1818), and the US Vice Presidency (1837). Richard M. and his brother James led the mounted units that routed the British and Indians in the War of 1812's Battle of the Thames. He operated the Choctaw Academy on his Blue Spring and White Sulphur Farms.

James Johnson (1174-1826) was a primary developer of Kentucky's stage and shipping industry. Kentucky's wealthiest man, and member of Congress from 1824-1826.

John T. Johnson (1788-1856) was a member of Congress from 1821 to 1835 and of Kentucky's "New Court of Appeals" in 1826. In 1831-1832, he was a primary leader in the union of the Alexander Campbell-led Reformed Baptists and the Christian Churches led by Barton Stone.

It was General William Ward, husband of Sallie Johnson (1778-1814), who laid the groundwork for the fortunes that his sons amassed. General Ward was an early Indian agent in the Delta area who early encountered Mississippi's rich bottom lands, and secured for his family choice plantations along the Mississippi River. The Wards were parents of Robert J. (1798-1862) and Junius R Ward (1802-1883), among the South's wealthiest men.

Junius Richard Ward (1802-1883) married Matilda Viley in 1827. He was the first family member to purchase Choctaw lands in the Mississippi Delta. His log house on Lake Washington is still a family home. Ward's second Mississippi home near the river became a victim of the Mississippi's legendary flooding.

Junius Ward used his Kentucky estate as his summer home, making the deep South his permanent residence. His brother Robert was reputed to be the wealthiest man in Kentucky, and it was his beautiful daughter, Sallie, the most noted belle of the south, who was frequently guest of honor at the grand balls at Ward Hall.

After the Civil War, Junius Ward found his fortune gone. He was forced to sell Ward Hall, which was advertised at the time of the sale as the "finest country residence in this section of the country." A later owner, Colonel Milton Hamilton, offered the house with 250 acres, plus $50,000, to the Kentucky Legislature should it agree to use the property for the state capitol.

Ward Hall has been owned by several families over the years. The latest owners have recently refurbished it and have it open on a limited basis as a house museum. It has attracted many admirers but none were more inspired than the builder's nephew who wrote that ward Hall was "the finest place in Kentucky at that time, a veritable palace surrounded by a fairy garden."

Homes of other family members in the vicinity included Lakeport, home of Lycurgus Johnson, son of Joel Johnson (1790-1846), a successful restoration project of Arkansas State University, with whom Ward Hall Preservation Foundation is working out an alliance.