File:Old Corn Crib (Visitor Center), White Hall, Richmond, KY.jpg

English: Settled in the late 18th Century by the Clay family, White Hall was built as a simple Georgian-style two-story brick farmhouse in 1798 by General Green Clay, with a kitchen wing being added in the early 19th Century to the side of the house. The house’s character changed radically with a major addition being undertaken to the side and rear of the original structure between 1861 and 1865, under the direction of architect Thomas Lewinski, which massively expanded the size of the house into a grand three-story mansion, and remodeled it in the then-popular Italianate style, with some Romanesque and Gothic details. The property around the house also includes multiple outbuildings, the oldest of which is the stone Georgian-style summer kitchen, built in 1790, with most of the other outbuildings being built between 1798 and 1865 of logs, rough-cut heavy timber, and locally quarried stone.

The main wing of the mansion features a red running bond brick exterior, hipped low-slope roof with multiple gables, Gothic brackets at the wide overhanging eaves, corbeling below the roofline, a central tower with a front gable roof, troifoil window, and paired arched one-over-one double-hung windows, a third floor balcony with brackets and a cast iron railing, a cast iron railing at the second floor, and a first floor entrance porch with decorative Gothic trim, brackets, paired square columns, stone floor and double entry door, and painted walls, a rusticated stone base, pilasters between the window bays and at the corners, arched windows at the third floor gables and second floor window openings, stone lintels and sills, and casement windows on the third floor of the rear facade. The house also has a rear ell, built in 1798 of flemish bond brick, which was the original Georgian-style farmhouse. The rear ell features a five-bay facade with two bays integrated into the main wing, a side gable roof with a steeper pitch than the main wing of the house, six-over-nine, four-over-four, two-over-two, and nine-over-six, decorative brackets at the eaves and decorative chimney stacks, added when the house was renovated and expanded in the 1860s, a stone block base, stone lintels and sills, and stone belt coursing between the first and second floors. The original front entrance porch/portico was replaced during a later renovation with an enclosed sun porch with massive four-over-four and two-over-two double-hung windows, a cornice with modillions and dentils, a low-slope hipped roof, and corner fluted corinthian pilasters. The rear-most ell of the house, which is two stories tall but has a much lower roofline, was built as a kitchen and service wing onto the house in the early 19th Century, and features a more rustic flemish bond brick exterior, a rear porch with an arched opening at the end wall, four-over-four and nine-over-six windows, belt coursing between the first and second floors, a stone block base, a decorative chimney added during the 1860s renovations, and stone lintels and sills on the principal facade. The house has an asymmetrical exterior, but appears picturesque, and has various layers of history very easily visible.

The house was home to General Green Clay (1757-1828) from the 1790s until his passing. Clay, a native of Virginia and early resident of Kentucky, surveyed much of the eastern and central parts of the state, and owned massive tracts of land in what is now the Kentucky Bluegrass, and was one of the wealthiest men in Kentucky during his lifetime. Green Clay owned slaves and ran a plantation out of White Hall. Upon Green Clay’s death, the estate was divided among his heirs, with his son, Cassius Marcellus Clay (1810-1903), inheriting the lands that included White Hall. Cassius Marcellus Clay, an abolitionist, freed all the slaves he inherited upon his father’s death, and helped found the town of Berea, Kentucky, donating ten acres of his lands in Madison County to abolitionist John G. Fee, whom founded Berea College in 1855. Clay was a supporter of the Republican Party in the 1850s and 1860s, being appointed as an ambassador to Russia by President Abraham Lincoln, during which time Clay’s wife, Mary Jane Warfield Clay, oversaw the renovations and expansion of the house. Clay ended up staying in Washington, DC during the outbreak of the Civil War, rallying 300 volunteers to guard the White House and US Naval Yard from potential confederate attack, as no federal troops were stationed in the city when the war broke out. Following the deployment of federal troops to guard the city, Clay departed for Russia, where he served as ambassador, securing Russia’s alliance with the union government of the United States, and was instrumental in having Russia issue an edict to the United Kingdom and France declaring Russia’s support for the union and opposition to any potential aid that the other countries would give to the Confederacy. Cassius Marcellus Clay returned to the United States in 1862, where he heavily influenced President Lincoln’s decision to issue the Emancipation Proclamation. Clay then returned to Russia in 1863, where he remained until 1869, assisting in William H. Seward’s endeavor to purchase Alaska.

Cassius Marcellus Clay was the father of two prominent women’s rights activists, Mary Barr Clay (1839-1924) and Laura Clay (1849-1941), both of whom pushed for women’s rights to vote and act as free agents in society. Both women were prominent supporters of women’s suffrage in the state of Kentucky and the south as a whole.

Cassius Marcellus Clay, Jr. was the birth name of world heavyweight championship boxer Muhammad Ali, whose father had been named in tribute to Clay. However, Muhammad Ali later rejected his birth name name as being a “slaveholder’s name” of someone who “held onto white supremacy” that he felt he did not identify with, heavily influenced by his involvement with the Nation of Islam, a controversial Black Nationalist organization.

The house became part of the Kentucky State Park System in 1968, and was restored with assistance from the Kentucky Mansions Preservation Foundation and Beula C. Nunn, wife of then-governor Louie B. Nunn. The house opened to the public in 1971 as a house museum. Unfortunately, despite the house’s historic significance, due to declining attendance and a decline in heritage tourism in general, the house was handed over to Eastern Kentucky University in 2019 as a cost-saving measure. However, the house remains open for tours and events.