House History
The House was built in three stages. A brick ell was constructed 1792-1795. Dr. McDowell purchased it in late 1802. He added the front, clapboard portion in 1803-1804 and the small brick office to the left of the back porch in 1820. The house was remodeled at the same time.
After McDowell's death in 1830 the house was sold. It was the home of a Centre College president for a short time. Later the entire area became slum and tenement property. The house deteriorated badly. Dr. August Schachner, of Louisville, led the efforts to buy the house for restoration. In 1921 he visited the house. "Since our last visit, the house has continued its downward course until it has reached a point where it now seems almost beyond redemption. The room that served as the original office of Dr. McDowell is now used as a shoe-shining booth for Negroes. The room in the rear of the corresponding front room on the second floor,"(the operating room) "which is on a lower level by several feet, is used as a dump for the ashes from the grates of the rooms on the second floor."
The Kentucky Medical Association bought the house in 1935 and deeded it to the state of Kentucky, who had it restored by Works Progress Administration (WPA). It was dedicated on May 20, 1939. In 1948, Kentucky returned the property to the Kentucky Medical Association.
The Kentucky Pharmaceutical Society restored the Apothecary Shop in the late 1950s with help from the Eli Lily Foundation. It was furnished by the Pfizer Laboratories. It was dedicated and presented to the Kentucky Medical Association on August 14, 1959.
Read more about this topic: Ephraim Mc Dowell House
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—Arthur Miller (b. 1915)
“To care for the quarrels of the past, to identify oneself passionately with a cause that became, politically speaking, a losing cause with the birth of the modern world, is to experience a kind of straining against reality, a rebellious nonconformity that, again, is rare in America, where children are instructed in the virtues of the system they live under, as though history had achieved a happy ending in American civics.”
—Mary McCarthy (1912–1989)