08/09/2026
The builder and original owner of the Norton-Gillig house was George W. Norton. Norton's daughter, Alice Norton Taylor, and her young family were its first residents in 1874 - 75.
Norton was a prominent 19th-century Lexington pharmacist, businessman, and property developer whose most lasting contribution to the city’s commercial and cultural landscape was the construction of Melodeon Hall (also known as the McAdams and Morford Building) at 200–206 West Main Street.
Around 1817, Norton erected a two-story pharmacy building on the southwest corner of West Main and Upper Streets—directly across from the old Fayette County Courthouse. This became the first of a continuous series of pharmacies on that lot that lasted more than 160 years. In 1849 he demolished the earlier structure and replaced it with a substantial three-story masonry building. The new structure opened to the public in 1850 and featured Norton’s pharmacy on the ground floor, with the second and third floors devoted to a large public hall (later called Melodeon Hall or the Grand Hall) that seated about 300 people. An ornate Italianate cast-iron façade was later added, making the building one of Lexington’s most distinctive surviving commercial landmarks.
Melodeon Hall quickly became a key social and cultural venue. It hosted concerts, theatrical performances, lectures, and political gatherings. Notable early events included its opening concert on New Year’s Day 1850 and appearances by performers such as Jenny Lind (“the Swedish Nightingale”), General Tom Thumb, and actor John Wilkes Booth. In January 1861, Rev. Robert Jefferson Breckinridge delivered a widely noted pro-Union speech there that is credited with helping keep Kentucky in the Union at the outset of the Civil War. Other political addresses, including one by Union Col. Frank Wolford in 1864, also took place in the hall.
Beyond the pharmacy and theater, the building later housed educational uses, including the Commercial College of Kentucky University (a forerunner of the University of Kentucky’s business programs) for many years under Wilbur R. Smith. The structure was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1973 and remains an important downtown landmark.
Norton’s activities centered on commerce and real-estate development in Lexington’s growing downtown core. As a pharmacist and property owner, he invested in substantial, multi-use buildings that combined retail, entertainment, and public assembly space—contributing to the city’s mid-19th-century expansion as a commercial and cultural center in the Bluegrass region. His work on the Main Street site stands as the clearest documented example of his role in shaping Lexington’s historic streetscape.
Situated on the southwest corner of West Main Street and Upper Street, and directly across from the old Fayette County Court House, Melodeon Hall is a three-story, masonry structure with an…
