Another Fine Winchester Home—Gone

Driving into Winchester last month (February 2022), I noticed a new­ly vacant lot where the Ratliff House had recent­ly stood at 130 West Lexington Avenue. Once a show­place, it had fall­en on hard times from lack of main­te­nance. A pic­ture of the house on Google Street View from September 2021 shows a fail­ing porch, dete­ri­o­rat­ed paint, rot­ting wood­work, com­pro­mised gut­ter­ing, and open­ings around the eaves and win­dows. And, if I have this cor­rect, the inte­ri­or had been con­demned by the health department.

So sad to see this hap­pen to a fine old home.  The sur­vey of Winchester res­i­dences by the Kentucky Heritage Commission found the house in good con­di­tion in 1976.  Even sad­der when you pair this loss with the loss of the his­toric Bloomfield House next door, which was torn down about a year ago.

The Ratliff House had an even longer his­to­ry.  It appears as the Dudley House on the 1877 Beers & Lanagan map of Winchester.  I was able to trace deeds for the house and lot back to 1848, before los­ing track of own­er­ship due to entan­gle­ments with law­suits involv­ing the prop­er­ty.  Former own­ers include some movers and shak­ers in 19^th cen­tu­ry Winchester:  John W. Clay, Robert J. Didlake, John M. Riffe, Zachariah E. Bush, Henry Grant, Parker A. Artis, and Jesse T. Williams.

Frank H. Dudley pur­chased the house from Williams in 1874.  Dudley had a fas­ci­nat­ing career.  He joined the “Forty-Niners” in the California gold rush, served in the Confederate Army dur­ing the Civil War, was engaged in steam­boat­ing on the Mississippi, and was sec­re­tary of an insur­ance com­pa­ny in Cincinnati before mov­ing to Clark County in 1868. There he was con­nect­ed with the bank­rupt­cy court, helped found Emmanuel Episcopal Church, and became a 32^nd degree Mason.  During the 1880s and ’90s, he oper­at­ed a fur­ni­ture and under­tak­ing busi­ness on Main Street in Winchester.

In 1883 Dudley sold the house to W. W. Justice.  Born in Indiana, William Wallace Justice kept a den­tal prac­tice in the same office in Winchester for 48 years.  He died in 1906, and his wife Sophia (née Croxton) died two years lat­er.  They left one daugh­ter, Rosa.  Unmarried, Rosa had lived in the house with her par­ents for 25 years, then resided there anoth­er 48 years after her par­ents died.  She was a piano teacher and founder of the Winchester Music Club. Rosa sold the house to her cousin, Mrs. Blanche Grant, in 1948; lan­guage in the deed allowed Rosa to con­tin­ue liv­ing there until her death in 1956.

In 1957, Blanche sold the prop­er­ty to Charles Bruce Ratliff and his wife Easter. 

The Ratliff fam­i­ly would occu­py the house for the next 64 years. Bruce Ratliff was a well-liked and respect­ed busi­ness­man in Winchester.  He was a co-founder of Ratliff Furniture Company, a real estate agent, and a farmer.  In addi­tion, Bruce had been a direc­tor of Peoples Commercial Bank, Clark County Hospital, and the Fish and Game Club.  He was instru­men­tal in bring­ing the Bundy Tubing, GTE Sylvania, and Pepsi-Cola plants to town.  His daugh­ter, Betty Ratliff Smith, a long-time writer for The Winchester Sun, was beloved by all.

Bruce died in 1985 and Easter in 1993.  The year before she passed away, Easter deed­ed the house to her son Robert Samuel “Sam” Ratliff.  Sam and his son Robert lived in the house until short­ly before it was razed.

I spoke with Mike Butler about the house.  He lived there as an infant with his moth­er, the afore­men­tioned Betty Ratliff Smith.  Mike remem­bered his grandfather’s house well.  It had eight beau­ti­ful fire­places, an unusu­al front door, and a grand front stair­case in the entry.  There were sev­en rooms and two baths on the first floor; Mike espe­cial­ly remem­bered a cedar-lined room that served for all occa­sions.  He attend­ed lots of par­ties and hol­i­days there, as well as week­ends eat­ing pop­corn and telling ghost stories.

According to Mike, at one time the south side of Lexington Avenue had park­ing, which dis­ap­peared when the city installed side­walks.  After that, the fam­i­ly prac­ti­cal­ly ceased to use the front door, as their car was always parked behind the house.