27 River Road
By Patrick Snadon
At No. 27 River Road is one of Ludlow's most interesting Victorian residences. A substantial house of brick and stone, it is prominently sited on a ridge overlooking the Ohio River and the Cincinnati Southern railway bridge. A long set of stone stairs leads up to the house from River Road.
The house is boldly designed for its conspicuous site. The facade is dramatically asymmetrical. The entertaining rooms are located to the left, or east, of the floor plan, with the parlor in front and the dining room behind. A square bay window gives the parlor northern views of the river and bridge, while a canted bay gives the dining room eastern views upriver. The circulation and service spaces occupy the right-hand, or western, portion of the plan, thus buffering the entertaining rooms from the railroad to the west.
The front, or north, elevation of the house mirrors these internal functions. The left side, denoting the important entertaining rooms, is vigorously composed. It is strikingly vertical and terminates at the roofline in a curved "Dutch" or "Flemish" gable (made by extending the brick front wall vertically into a parapet that conceals the roof edges). This gable originated in the Netherlands but was also used in Britain in the early 1600s and called "Jacobean" (for the reign of King James I). The Victorians revived these bold gables in the late 19th-century. The Maxwell House gable contains two arched windows in the attic story and culminates in a small, triangular pediment with a fan motif. At the lower stories, stone belt courses extend horizontally from the window sills and lintels. The right side of the facade, denoting the entry hall, with kitchen and pantries behind, is lower and simpler. The wooden porch, with its turned posts and jigsaw-cut spandrels, looks convincingly Victorian but is, in fact, a reconstruction from the late 1980s (photographs from the 1984 National Register of Historic Places form show that the house had lost all of its original wooden porches by that date). The interiors of the house contain much original woodwork and the slate mantelpieces in the parlor and dining room are beautifully ornamented with decorative painting, graining, and gilding.
Much of our historical information about the house comes from the 1984 "Kentucky Historic Resources Inventory" form (available on line from the Kentucky Heritage Council), and the longer, 1984 Ludlow National Register form (available on line from the Library of Congress). While these forms are generally quite reliable, they appear to error in their interpretation of the Maxwell House. Both forms rely upon the 1883 "Atlas" map of Ludlow, which shows the outline of a riverfront dwelling, listed as "Res. E. H. Maxwell." The 1984 forms assume this house to be part of the new, brick, Maxwell House, when, in fact, it is the old, one-story wooden "Ludlow Homestead," into which the Maxwells moved before building the new brick house next-door to the east. In order to explain the differing plan outlines of the two houses, these forms suggest that the brick house was built in two halves (western first, c. 1880; eastern second, c. 1890). There seems little evidence for this hypothesis.
Edward H. Maxwell (c. 1849-1894, from Boston, MA), was the fifth and final husband of Louisa Ludlow Maxwell (1831-1885), the daughter and eldest child of Israel L. Ludlow (1804-1846) and his wife, Helen Adela (Slacum) Ludlow (1807-1872), the founders of the town. Louisa's five marriages and independent behavior gave her a controversial reputation (to be fair, only two of her five marriages ended in divorces). When Louisa's mother, Helen Adela Ludlow, died in 1872, at the Ludlow Homestead on River Road, her extensive property in Ludlow passed equally to Louisa and her two younger brothers, William S. Ludlow (1841-1931) and Albert S. Ludlow (1844-1919). Louisa was living away at this time and, by 1875, Albert S. Ludlow had married and moved to Wisconsin. William S. Ludlow never married and managed the family properties in Ludlow from his various residential apartments in downtown Cincinnati.
After Louisa married Edward H. Maxwell in 1874, tensions developed among the siblings. In 1876, Louisa and her new husband demanded a partition of the Ludlow
properties. They took their third, while William S. Ludlow continued to manage the remaining two-thirds for the brothers. (The 1883 "Atlas" map of Ludlow records this property division: undeveloped parcels are labeled either "Maxwell"--for E. H. and Louisa Ludlow Maxwell--or "Wm. S. & A. S. Ludlow.") Then, in 1880, the Maxwells sued the Ludlow brothers, claiming the properties were unfairly divided (this suit was eventually settled in favor of the brothers, but only after Louisa's death). This family wrangling must be seen in the context of the construction of the Cincinnati Southern Railroad through Ludlow and the rapid rise in population and property prices. Between 1873 and 1880, when the CSR opened to Chattanooga, Ludlow transformed from a sleepy village to an industrial boom town with the smell of money in the air.
Louisa Ludlow Maxwell returned to Ludlow with her new husband in the late 1870s or early 1880s, to manage her properties. They had evidently inherited the Ludlow Homestead and its parcel on River Road in the 1876 property partition, and temporarily moved into it. As mentioned earlier, the 1883 "Atlas" map of Ludlow labels a T-plan house on River Road as the "Res.[idence of] E. H. Maxwell." The outline of this house on the 1883 map, however, corresponds not with the newer, brick Victorian house, but with the older Ludlow Homestead slightly further west (photograph in the Ludlow Heritage Museum, pictured in Source 4, Mark Mitchell, p. 172). So, when the 1883 map was made, the Maxwells were living in the old Ludlow Homestead and the new brick house had not yet been built. Louisa Ludlow Maxwell died in 1885. Was the new brick house finished before she died? Did she ever live in it? Or did her husband, Edward H. Maxwell, finish it after her death?
These questions require further research. But the location of the brick Victorian house at 27 River Road suggests that the Maxwells did plan it and build it. It seems to be on the eastern, or upriver, edge of the Ludlow Homestead property which, after 1876, the Maxwells controlled. Building on this parcel identified them with Louisa's parents, the town's founders. The new brick house, with its dramatic composition and prominent site at the crux of the river and the railroad, was perhaps intended as a billboard in the minds of the Maxwells, announcing that "we are Ludlow," and competing with Louisa's younger brothers in the development of the town. Only Louisa's premature death in 1885 precluded these ambitions. Thereafter, William S. Ludlow managed the brothers' properties until his death in 1931, while the Maxwell properties developed on a separate trajectory that will require more research to understand. Louisa Ludlow tends historically to be "the forgotten Ludlow." The Victorian mansion at 27 River Road, however, suggests that she deserves more attention.
SOURCES
1883 "Atlas" map of Ludlow ("An Atlas of Boone, Kenton and Campbell Counties, Kentucky . . . ." Philadelphia: D. J. Lake & Co., 1883 (reprinted 1977 by Unigraphic, Evansville, IN), pp. 30-31.
Lori Feldman and Kentucky Heritage Council, "Maxwell House," Kentucky Historic Resources Inventory, No. 27 River Road, Ludlow, KY" (April, 1984).
Feldman, et. al., National Register of Historic Places Inventory-Nomination Form: Historic Resources - Ludlow, Kenton Co., KY (Nov. 28, 1984). See Item 7, p. 10; Item 8, p. 3.
Mark Mitchell, The Ludlow Legacy: The Descendants of Israel Ludlow . . . .Privately printed, 2015, pp. 152-155.
David E. Schroeder, Life Along the Ohio: A Sesquicentennial History of Ludlow, Kentucky. Milford, OH: Little Miami Publishing Co., 2014, pp. 32-33, 40-41.
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