George Hunt Pendleton House, Cincinnati

The George H. Pendleton House is a historic house in the Prospect Hill Historic District of Cincinnati. It was built in 1870 in the French Second Empire style. From 1879 until his death in 1889, this was the residence of Senator George Hunt Pendleton (1825-89). As a U.S. Senator (1879-1885), Pendleton spearheaded civil service reform, meeting here in 1882 to draft the Pendleton Act, which created the Civil Service merit system.

The house was built about 1870. It is a 2-1/2 story brick building, with a mansard roof providing a full third floor in the attic. The roof has a bracketed eave, and is pierced by dormers with flanking bracketed pilasters. The main facade is three bays wide, with a center entrance flanked by pilasters and topped by a corniced entablature.

Pendleton was a lawyer and Democratic politician, who first won election to the United States Senate in 1857. He left Congress in 1865, but was returned to the Senate in 1879. At the time, jobs in the federal government were largely distributed through political patronage, often without regard to the competence for the position by the individuals hired. Although Pendleton appears to not have been a strong advocate of civil service reform, a Senate subcommittee met in his Cincinnati home in early 1882 to complete a draft civil service reform bill.

This bill, enacted later in 1882 following widespread popular calls for civil service reform, was known as the Pendleton Act, and represents the birth of the modern merit-based civil service that has operated since. Pendleton's involvement in the bill cost him reelection in 1884, due to a lack of support from party operatives who had opposed the reforms.

The building was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1964.