Bashford Manor
Near Louisville, Kentucky
Bashford Manor began in eighteen seventy-four as a country house designed by the noted Louisville architect Henry Whitestone for a man named J. B. Wilder, who named it after his family's ancestral home in England. Its fame, though, came from horses. In eighteen eighty-eight, George J. Long bought the place and turned it into one of the most respected thoroughbred farms in Kentucky.
Three Kentucky Derby winners were foaled on this ground. Azra took the Derby in eighteen ninety-two, Manuel in eighteen ninety-nine, and Sir Huon in nineteen oh six, two of them carrying the farm's peacock blue and yellow silks. The horses were sold off in nineteen twenty-two, the barns razed in nineteen seventy, and the mansion came down in nineteen seventy-three. Only the old carriage house survives. A race at Churchill Downs, the Bashford Manor Stakes, still keeps the name alive.
