This ornate house, designed by William Jay and completed in 1819, is considered one of the finest examples of English Regency architecture in the U.S. The house contains decorative art ranging from the late 18th to the early 19th century, as well as a rare example of intact urban slave quarters. The home was built for cotton merchant and banker Richard Richardson and his wife Francis Bolton, whose brother was married to Ann Jay, the architect’s sister. Revolutionary hero Marquis de Lafayette was a guest here in 1825, and in 1831 the mayor of Savannah, George Welshman Owens, purchased the property. It remained in his family until 1951, when Margaret Thomas, George Owens’ granddaughter, bequeathed it to the Telfair Museum of Art.