On December 14, 1796, the General Assembly approved a measure to provide a house for the governor "since it is judged by the
legislature that the purchase or the erecting a home will eventually be attended with less expence than the renting one from
year to year." Three commissioners were appointed to obtain a home for the governor and to provide it with "a sufficient number
of chairs, tables, cup-boards and bedsteads; also a commodious desk, side-board, book-case and chest of drawers: also to purchase
a lot of ground not exceeding two acres, for the purpose of a garden, and have the same neatly enclosed."
A sum of twelve hundred pounds was appropriated for this purchase. The commissioners eventually decided to build the house which
was first occupied by Governor James Garrard (1796-1804) and which by the twentieth century had become a home for the lieutenant governor.
This detail from a map of The City of Frankfort, Franklin Co., Ky., published by Hart & Mapother in 1854, shows the Old State Capitol, the "Governor's Palace," and the Kentucky Penitentiary. Donated by Mr. and Mrs. Hugh Hudson, Kentucky Historical Society Collections.
