Gratz Park Inn: The Old Lexington Clinic’s Restless Guests

Reviewed by Josh N · Updated August 27, 2026 · How we verify

A doctor’s waiting room is an unusual foundation for a ghost story, but that is what lies underneath the Gratz Park Inn in Lexington, Kentucky. The building went up in 1916 as the home of a family medical practice, and for roughly four decades the people passing through its doors were patients rather than paying guests. The stories told about the place now, of a woman in white on the first floor and children’s jacks turning up in corridors, sit on top of that clinical past. None of them are verified. All of them are repeated often enough that the inn’s haunted reputation has outlived the inn’s own name.

Quick Orientation for the Gratz Park Inn

• Built: 1916, originally as the offices of a family medical practice.
• Original use: the Lexington Clinic, founded by Dr. Waller O. Bullock, Dr. David Barrow and Dr. David Woolfold.
• Became a hotel: 1987, as the Gratz Park Inn.
• Setting: the Gratz Park Historic District, in the heart of downtown Lexington.
• Today: the site is occupied by The Sire Hotel Lexington, Tapestry Collection by Hilton, so the Gratz Park Inn name no longer appears on the door.

From the Lexington Clinic to a Boutique Hotel

The building’s first life was medical. Three doctors, Waller O. Bullock, David Barrow and David Woolfold, established a practice here that grew into the Lexington Clinic. It expanded steadily until the clinic outgrew the premises and relocated in the 1950s, leaving the building to a quieter middle age: a spell of vacancy, then a period as the headquarters of an engineering firm.

The conversion to lodging came in 1987, when the property reopened as the Gratz Park Inn, a small hotel furnished with antiques and trading heavily on the atmosphere of its surroundings. That setting is genuine. Gratz Park is one of Lexington’s designated historic districts, and the inn’s 1916 fabric is part of what gives the block its character.

The property has also carried national recognition. Under its current identity as The Sire Hotel Lexington, Tapestry Collection by Hilton, the 1916 building has appeared on the roster of Historic Hotels of America, a program run by the National Trust for Historic Preservation since 1989. That program is not a ghost register. It admits hotels that are at least 50 years old, that are designated a National Historic Landmark or listed on or eligible for the National Register of Historic Places, and that are recognised as historically significant. The Sire is now listed among the program’s former Kentucky members, alongside other Lexington properties. It is worth noting because it separates two different claims: the building’s historic importance is documented, and its haunting is not.

The Woman in White and the Jacks in the Hallway

Everything in this section is reported experience passed on by guests and staff. There is no death record, inquest or newspaper account offered in support of any of it.

The most frequently described figure is a woman in white, usually seen on the first floor. Accounts of her tend to be brief: a glimpse, a passing impression, no interaction. A second recurring figure is an elderly man described as sorrowful, whose reported appearances are linked to small objects being moved or displaced around the rooms.

Two details do the most work in the inn’s reputation. The first is the sound. Guests have described laughter and the noise of an unseen gathering carrying through the building at night, with no source and no party to attach it to. The second is the jacks. Guests report finding the small metal game pieces sitting in hallways where nobody left them. Because jacks are a child’s toy, the story has attracted the obvious inference about who might be leaving them, though no source names a child or ties one to the building’s clinic years. Treat that connection as folklore filling a gap rather than as evidence.

Beyond that, the usual boutique-hotel catalogue: televisions that switch themselves on and off, reportedly including sets that were unplugged at the time. Old wiring in a building over a century old is the sceptic’s answer, and it is a fair one.

Staying on the Gratz Park Inn Site

You can still book a room in the building, but check the name before you search. The property now operates as The Sire Hotel Lexington, Tapestry Collection by Hilton, on the site of the former Gratz Park Inn. Visitors looking for the old name on signage or on booking sites will not find it.

The location itself is the strongest reason to go. The hotel sits inside the Gratz Park Historic District, walkable from downtown Lexington, and the surrounding streets are worth an hour on their own regardless of what happens in the corridors after midnight. Guests hoping for a ghost should keep expectations modest: the reported phenomena here are quiet ones, mostly sounds, small displaced objects and half-seen figures, and they are reported irregularly. Hotel staff are the best source on what has been noticed recently, and asking politely at the desk will get you further than wandering the floors with a recorder.

See Gratz Park Inn for Yourself

Sources

• Willard Hotel
• National Register of Historic Places (National Park Service)
• Lawrence P. Horwitz statement
• Eagles Mere Inn now one of 300 properties recognized by National Trust for Historic Preservation for 'Historic Hotels of America'
• National Register of Historic Places Registration: Eagles Mere Historic District
• Wikipedia: Historic Hotels of America

Address: 120 West Second Street

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