Every historic building has a story to tell
From my earliest days as a denizen of backseat land, watching the world unfold from the car window, I’ve been a careful observer of place names.* Road signs, heralding a waterway or community, were carefully transcribed by me in my ever-present sketch pad or notebook, to serve as the root of many a daydream when it (read more)
My perception of barns took a sharp detour during the short time I lived north of the Mason-Dixon line in Pennsylvania. There, the complexity, grandeur, and beauty of what is known as the Pennsylvania barn* completely changed my understanding of this most visible of agricultural outbuildings. I felt the same way with my first glimpse of (read more)
The vernacular front gable church with two entry doors has great appeal to a wide audience. I love the simplistic, almost austere beauty of these buildings. As a historic type, they were built in Kentucky through almost every stylistic period and decade, up into the 20th century. The Ghent Baptist Church, constructed in 1843, is (read more)
Historic communities are, by their very existence, full of contrast – even if that diversity goes unseen by the modern viewer. I imagine there are many people who see West Louisville as a single neighborhood, unified only by economic disparity, fear of violence, and boarded-up buildings with openings left expressionless by sheets of plywood. This is (read more)
I entered the world of historic preservation fresh from college, armed with my English and Art History degree, a love of old houses – and not much else. I knew virtually nothing. Worse, I really had no concept of how buildings work. Fortunately, I met Scot Walters before I bumbled too far. Scot, with his architecture school (read more)
Category: Architecture
Tags: #frankfortky, #housedoctor, #scotwalters
Have you ever noticed two historic houses side-by-side and thought they looked identical? “Twin” dwellings are common in early 20th century residential development in many Kentucky towns – often an example of small scale speculative development. Pattern books and catalogs from titans of the “mail-order home” business like Sears, Roebuck and Montgomery Ward (among many others) (read more)
On June 10, 1886, a post office was established at a crossroads in northwestern Jackson County, Kentucky, and the community around it christened “Collinsworth.” This wasn’t the birth of the village, for it had been around well before the Civil War, but a post office marked the beginning of a modern community, one in touch (read more)
StoryCorps is coming back to town! The nonprofit organization that helps people record stories about their lives and “leave a legacy for the future” will return to Lexington, Kentucky on March 16, parking their MobileBooth — a sleek Airstream trailer converted to a recording studio — at Phoenix Park next to the downtown library. I visited the (read more)
Categories: Kentucky history, Oral History
Tags: NPR, oral history, StoryCorps, StoryCorps MobileBooth, WUKY
Monday morning deserves a dreamy Queen Anne-Romanesque Revival style house, I think… and the George W. Robson, Jr. house fits the bill! Cincinnati-based architect Samuel E. des Jardins designed this gorgeous dwelling for Robson, an affluent resident of Bellevue, in Campbell County, Kentucky. The 2.5 story brick house has massive stone arches over the second (read more)
The chain link fences have gone up, making visible the divide between what was and what shall be – from tired reminders of former neighborhoods to blank earth, littered by concrete and gravel. And with the demolition of these houses, one of the last vestiges of the Virginia Avenue neighborhood between South Limestone and South (read more)
Categories: Demolition, Fayette County, Historic architecture, Historic Preservation, Kentucky architecture, Lexington Kentucky History, Lexington neighborhoods, Vernacular architecture
Tags: Adamstown, demolition, Lottie Street, Lottie Street Presbyterian Church, Maxwell Street Presbyterian Church, Porter Memorial Baptist Church, University of Kentucky, Virginia Avenue, W.S. Griffing
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