Site of the Love House
Frankfort, Franklin County, Kentucky
Marker Inscription
Site of Love House. First meeting of the Legislature, after Frankfort made capital, held here, 1793, when owned by Andrew Holmes. Built about 1786 by Gen. James Wilkinson. Purchased in 1797 by Maj. Thomas Love and wife. It was for years an inn and center of political and social life for the capital. The exiled French Prince Louis Philippe and Aaron Burr were among guests. In use until 1870.
Erected by Kentucky Historical Society
The Story
Built around 1786 by General James Wilkinson on land once owned by Aaron Burr, this house hosted the first meeting of the legislature after Frankfort became Kentucky's capital in 1793. Later purchased by Major Thomas Love, it served for years as an inn and the social and political heart of the young capital. Its guests included the exiled French prince Louis Philippe—a future king of France—and Aaron Burr himself.
Why it matters
On the Kentucky frontier this inn was where a new state's government first convened, a reminder of how quickly republican self-rule took root west of the Appalachians.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
When the legislature first gathered here in 1793, Kentucky was brand new — admitted to the Union only the year before as the first state carved out of the trans-Appalachian West. Everything about self-government west of the mountains was still being invented, often in borrowed rooms, because the young state had more ambition than public buildings.
Frankfort had just been chosen as the capital, and a settlement barely a decade removed from the frontier suddenly had to house the machinery of a state. A substantial private house — the one this marker commemorates — became the practical answer. Governing, in those early years, happened wherever there was space and a good table.
The house itself was already a few years old by then, built in the mid-1780s when the Ohio Valley was a raw and contested edge of the country. To meet within its walls in 1793 was to hold a formal act of republican government inside a building that predated the state itself.
People & events
The marker traces the house through a remarkable cast. It was built in the 1780s by General James Wilkinson, a figure whose ambitions ran wide across the early Western country. By the time the legislature met inside it in 1793, the property had passed to another owner, Andrew Holmes.
In 1797 it came into the hands of a Major Thomas Love and his wife, and under them it settled into the role it is best remembered for: an inn, and for years the social and political heart of the capital. In a small town where the state's business and the town's gossip flowed through the same doorways, a good inn was where deals, friendships, and reputations were made.
The guest list the marker preserves is what lifts the place from local landmark to something stranger and grander. Among those who passed through were Louis Philippe — a French prince living in exile who would one day return home to reign as king — and Aaron Burr, whose later Western travels and schemes made him one of the most controversial Americans of the age. A frontier Kentucky inn that could host a future king of France and a former Vice President of the United States was clearly no ordinary roadhouse.
Its place in the American story
This spot marks one of the quiet truths of the early republic: self-rule spread west far faster than the buildings to house it. A new state convened its lawmakers in a private house because that was what the moment required, and the fact that it worked at all is part of the American story. Government here was improvised, close to the ground, and astonishingly durable.
The guests point outward to a wider world. That a displaced European prince and a national political figure both found their way to this door is a reminder that the American West was not as isolated as we imagine. It was stitched into currents of exile, ambition, and travel that reached across the Atlantic and across the young country.
A building that served from the frontier era until 1870 also spans an enormous stretch of change — from a raw new state to a nation transformed by decades of growth and conflict. Places like this are where the abstraction of "the early republic" becomes a room with a fire in it and people arguing over its future.
If you visit
This is a "site of" marker, so come ready to use your imagination rather than to tour a preserved house. What you are standing near is the ground where a state's government first sat down to work, and the pleasure is in conjuring the vanished building from the words on the sign.
Frankfort is a compact, walkable capital layered thick with early Kentucky history, and this marker sits comfortably within a stroll of that story. Read it slowly, then look around at the streets and think about lawmakers, innkeepers, and the occasional exiled prince moving through them.
It makes an ideal first stop on a capital-history walk. Let it set the theme — a frontier town learning to govern itself — and carry that lens with you to the other historic sites nearby.
Written by AI to add context, grounded in the marker’s inscription and the historical record. The inscription above is the original, unaltered text.
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Related people
- · Gen. James Wilkinson
- · Maj. Thomas Love
- · Louis Philippe
- · Aaron Burr
Related events
- · First legislature at Frankfort, 1793
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