A 4,000 square-foot, $600,000 condo would be uncommon anywhere in the Piedmont. In downtown Lexington, it’s a unicorn. 121 N. Main Street is the second floor of a commercial building dating back to 1920 or so. The building itself is a small but attractive contributing structure to the Uptown Lexington Historic District on the National Register. It’s at the corner of North Main Street and East 2nd Avenue.
Condos over downtown retail spaces are familiar in larger cities, but why an owner would create one gigantic condo instead of two smaller and more affordable units is a mystery (the unit is owned by one of the condo’s developers). The condo is relatively new; the building was converted to a condominium in 2021. The interior is contemporary with no trace of historic character, not even an exposed brick wall. Its most striking feature is a 1,300 square-foot space that now contains a home theatre, pool table, ping pong table and arcade video-game machine (if you know a teen-age boy who can afford a $600,000 condo, pass this along).
The unit has four bedrooms and three bathrooms. It has a street-level front entrance on Main Street and a gated, second-floor back entrance with a small deck around the corner off East 2nd Avenue. The listing says the unit has a dedicated parking space; it doesn’t say where it is.
At 4,088 square feet, the $600,000 price comes to $131 per square foot. The square-foot price isn’t excessive compared to condos in other cities, but it’s not clear whether there are comparable units in Lexington (or anywhere, really).
The intriguing Red Donut Shop is on the first floor (its address is 117 N. Main Street; the second floor is numbered separately as 121, which was the entire building’s address for many years). Another first-floor retail unit faces East 2nd Avenue. Condo documents (North Main Commons) list six units in two adjacent buildings, including 115 N. Main; this appears to be the only residential unit.
117/121 N. Main has been home to a variety of businesses, sometimes two at a time, including an auto parts wholesaler, a branch bank, an insurance agency, a jewelry store, a loan company, and two stores selling radios and, later, televisions.
“Although the Sanborn Maps indicate that a two-story store was located on this site from at least 1885, the present building appears to date from the 1920s,” the district’s National Register nomination says. “In fact, it was likely rebuilt or heavily remodeled between 1923 and 1929, because the 1929 map describes in detail — for the first time — its fireproof construction.”
The nomination cites the building as an excellent example of downtown Lexington’s “classical phase.”
“Classical influence continued in the detailing of many of the district’s buildings from the late 1910s and 1920s,” it says. “Focused around the doors and windows and on string courses and cornices, these details were often emphasized by the use of white stone or terra cotta against red brick walls.”
This particular building “is distinguished by the use of red brick veneer accented by white blocked stone on the first story of the facade, along with stone garlands beneath the second-story windows, stone medallions above the windows, and a white string course and coped cornice.”
- $600,000
- 4 bedrooms, 3 bathrooms, 4,088 square feet
- Price/square foot: $131
- Built in 1920
- Listed November 13, 2024
- Last sales: $175,000, December 2016; $264,000, January 2015
- Neighborhood: Uptown Lexington Historic District (NR)
Piedmont Historic Homes 