Excellent personal tour by Kathy. Great place to stop and hear some KY history of the Bryant Boone family. Price is fair and i love love that we were able to walk into each room and see the antiques up close. We were so pleased to find this tour. read more

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We visited Waveland historical site for family pictures. This location is a gorgeous venue. It has many buildings as well as lush gardens for a picturesque experience! read more

Twice during this corona virus pandemic my wife and I have made the trek from Frankfort to Lexington to get carry out from one of our go to restaurants. Not wanting to let the food cool off on the trip back to Frankfort we have stopped at this beautiful place to picnic. The grounds are immaculate. There are picnic tables spread around. Today we shared our space with a small flock of cedar waxwings followed by a tiny little squirrel. What an unexpected pleasure!! We would never have found this lovely spot were it not for the pandemic. What a silver lining. When it is safe we will be back to take the tour. read more

What a pleasant holiday treat! A group of twenty attended the holiday tea at Waveland today. Beautiful venue; outstanding Christmas Tea, tasty food & sweets, followed by an expert docent-led tour. This might become a holiday tradition! Great experience! read more

WOW! What a treasure we found when we visited the Waveland State Historic Site! I had no idea this was in the Kentucky Park system. We were in the area with free time so we decided to check it out. What a nice surprise. We received a tour given by a very knowledgeable guide dressed in period clothing. The home is full of beautiful furniture much of which is original to the home. The history contained includes the Bryan family well known to Lexington and goes back to their ties to Daniel Boone. The home has been carefully preserved and is truly an unexpected treasure. You tour almost all of the home along with the slave quarters with kitchen and the smokehouse. The grounds also feature several gardens. Waveland Museum is also available to rent for weddings and parties. I highly recommend a visit to this hidden gem. The amount of history contained within the walls and the detail of the tour provided at Waveland Museum is truly exceptional. read more

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Pattern upon pattern. I love the Greek Revival tacky and loud carpets, drapes, wallpaper, and faux marble baseboards. The way that this historic home is decorated is over the top! I love cultural history, so an afternoon at a historic home is great entertainment for me. Several of the tour guides dress in period costumes. I haven't seen docents at any of the other historic homes in town dress in costume. In addition, unlike other historic homes in Lexington, Waveland has standing slave quarters included on the tour. Also included on the tour are the ice-house and smokehouse. This a great representation of an Antebellum house and the tour provides interesting information on how a wealthy family lived in the "Athens of the West" during the 19th century. Waveland is a great place to pack a picnic lunch and enjoy beautiful scenery. Many families take pictures on the grounds. There is a lovely garden and a playhouse for children. read more

Waveland Museum - Museums Near Me - Lexington, Kentucky

For those who are into historic tours, this has a lot to offer. You could to see about 75% of the house, the kitchen and the pantry and three bedrooms are not on the tour because of a grease fire that was in the warming Kitchen in the 1980s, and the lack of furniture for some of the additional rooms. However some interesting artifacts are at the house and you get to see the kitchen and the slave quarters as well. For seven dollars for an adult and four dollars for students, is a good way to spend about an hour. You need a little bit more out of the experience by walking to the gardens and some of the trails that are available, but the playground doesn't have much to offer for kids. I would recommend this for someone who's interested in history in old houses, and inquiring further stories from the docents. If you only had a day in Lexington, this would probably not make my list of top historical tours, but for someone who wants something different to do on the weekend, I would recommend it. The house was auctioned off and for awhile in between the original owners the house was owned by a farming family. Since the 50s this has either been owned by the state department or University of Kentucky, and the groups have done a good job returning it to its original look from the 1800s. read more

Waveland Museum - Kitchen, laundry on the first floor and historical slave quarters on the second floor. - Museums Near Me - Lexington, Kentucky

Beautiful home with beautiful grounds. Very interesting history of the home and farm. The docent was very knowledgeable and answered our many questions. Worth the trip! read more

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I needed to get out of the house today so after 14 years of hearing about it, I finally drove 2 miles over to the Site and walked around. It was a very relaxing walk with a few gardens to linger in. I obviously missed the peak-spring blooms but other buds are coming in just in time for Summer. Older kids will get bored quickly if you don't bring a ball to kick/throw around but younger ones will be distracted easily with the small playground on-site. The log cabin playhouse is darling and no doubt the back-drop in many photo shoots. I've yet to take the house tour or walk through the gift shop but now that I know how charming the grounds are I'll go back soon and update this review ;) read more

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Visited on this cold winter evening. The house was still decorated for Christmas, Guides in period costume gave interesting and informative talks about the Bryan family, their history and life on the property during the 1800's. The original slave quarters, with the kitchen on the first floor and their living quarters upstairs is very well preserved, and the displays within the building are excellent. This is a beautiful historic house that is well represented by the furnishings that have been selected as indicative of the period. The grounds are lovely and a peaceful retreat to enjoy a picnic lunch (during warm weather). How many of us have traveled on Nicholasville Road, never having visited Waveland. Do yourself a favor and pick a nice Spring day to step back into its history. read more

I had never been to a plantation before, so I specifically came to Lexington in order to check out some old timey buildings of which they have a couple. The site of Waveland is well kept and complete as there are still the buildings that were slave quarters/kitchens standing and the ice house. Most of the furniture didn't belong to the family that lived there, but is from the period and donated. The tour guide was knowledgeable and worth the admission we paid. My only issue was she made a comment about how slavery wasn't so bad for the slaves that resided at Waveland because they had pretty nice quarters compared to other plantations. Ummmmm! Why would you surmise that? And why would you repeat it to a Black woman? The last leg of the tour ended in a room that appears to be under construction as. They are creating an exhibit about slavery in Kentucky and they have some shackles and clothing that slaves would have worn. Once, that is completed it should be pretty nice. read more

Waveland is a historic estate located in Lexington KY. It is interesting because most of the furnishings and accessories there are original to the estate. They were even able to find and match the original carpet. I think it's fascinating to imagine what kind of people lived there based on the interior design of the home . Unfortunately, far too often, a lot of historic homes don't have the original furnishings and accessories but instead are furnished with period pieces. On a day we visited, there were a lot of historical demonstrations on the property, and small tours of a few rooms of the house. They even had a small coffin placed in the foyer, for the mourning display, as we visited right before the Halloween. read more

We arrived an hour or so before sunset, so unfortunately we missed the tours for that day. We walked around the grounds and peeped in some of the windows. Most of them had curtains, so we couldn't see much. The place is not very big, so it didn't take much time. It would have been nice to have some more signs with educational information, but it was very sparse. Tours cost $7 for adults. Not sure if I'd go out of my way to visit this place. read more

This is a beautiful place to visit. I like to take my kids there for a picnic and then let them play at the park. The kids favorite part is a little cottage that the kids can play in. They pretend to make fires in the fireplace and cook food. I like to take my family there for pictures. The grounds there are very pretty and the old building make for great backgrounds for pictures. read more

We had contacted a woman at this museum asking about tours. On the day we arrived, we were never able to tour because the person working there had been hiding in the gift shop (where you buy tickets) with the doors locked. She then waited until both we and another gentlemen that was waiting gave up and got into our cars. Then she came out, looked around, locked the door, and left with her purse. We contacted them the following day and were told she was in back and never heard us. That cannot be true. The building was a small cabin. She avoided us in order to go home early. read more

This place is pretty frikkin sweet. The grounds are well kept and there are bbq's and it's all free. Besides the tour... Which is super cheesy and really cheap. Nice people though. Do the tour, intoxicated. Just don't fall over stuff, it's expensive, and old. Definitely bbq here for a chill day though. read more

When I took my 83yo hard-of-hearing and unsteady father to the Museum for the Dickens Christmas presentation, we were pleasantly surprised and very touched by the attentiveness of the officials there. Without ever making him feel patronized or in the way, they quickly met him outside when he was uncomfortable with the entrance steps. They took him around the back to an outdoor elevator to get inside, allowed him to lean on them, showed him the best place to stand to hear the show, brought him a chair, and kept him company when he decided to forgo going upstairs to the top level of the house. They were so kind and helpful, that he said a few days later he kept thinking about how great the show was and how nice the people were. read more

The home is beautiful, the grounds well maintained and more of an open field where it would be good to take children to play as long as you can keep them under control while touring the fragile antiques of the main house. The guides are very knowledgeable, The antiques are lovely. The grounds are beautiful in their own country way with large swaths of land for children to play. It has a wonderful history and is a great example of life in Kentucky at that time for the wealthy. I understand one person above was offended by someone saying that slaves lived better at Waveland than at other estates. This is told to everybody and I believe it to be true. The Bryan family believed that it was best to keep their slaves happy and healthy and therefore provided shelter and food equivalent to poor white families at the time. Maybe they suffered the indignity of being a slave but in comparison they had feather beds. My aunt owns a historic home nearby where the slaves were put in a dungeon and chained to the wall in the cellar of her house. In comparison the slaves at the Bryan home were well cared for and well fed and treated well. Not all slaves were treated poorly or beaten savagely and the information the tour guide gave to the best of my knowledge while not pleasant is completely true and historically accurate. This information has been shared to me on every past tour I have had and more recently by a lovely African American tour guide by the name of June. The whole experience at Waveland is wonderful and I believe all the information to be historically accurate. read more