I took a stroll to get some bagels earlier this week, and might have also used the time to take some photographs of historic houses (shocking, I know). One of my favorite little oddities, at 384 Oldham Avenue, caught my eye as it has in the past. On a street of mostly T-plan cottages, this dwelling has always fascinated me. This time though, I decided to look into this curious little shotgun house and discover its story. It’s proving a bit more complicated than I thought, so I am reaching out for help. (Mystery solved! See end of post.)
Wouldn’t you be intrigued too?
One theory is that this one-story house was moved to its current location sometime in the 1970s (because this is not the house seen on the Sanborn map below). From the snippets I’ve been able to track down, the construction of a new bank on Euclid Avenue (and its surface parking lot) necessitated the destruction (of course) of several buildings – but this house was saved and moved. It may have originally been located on Lafayette – and what is now the front may have been the original rear elevation. So moved, and flipped around.
But house moving isn’t a simple task, and it seems like something would have made the newspapers?
A section of the 1934 Sanborn Fire Insurance map showing the area in question.
The main problem is that I wasn’t walking around Lexington observing development patterns during the 1970s or 1980s. While the PVA gives me one date to work from – 1979- I don’t have many other substantial clues. Was it a new build on a side yard in 1979?
Was it actually moved as part of the ongoing changes along Euclid Avenue? Many businesses have come and gone on Euclid since that time, and I sadly don’t have a stack of city directories handy by my computer (anyone remember when the Jimmy John’s was a Blockbuster?).
541 Euclid at left, and 545 Euclid at right. Image from Google streetview.
The easiest explanation is that this house was originally located at 545 Euclid Avenue (the map shows a one-story frame shotgun on that parcel) – but there is still a one-story frame building (Yasmine’s Salon) in that location! Did the filling station once located at the corner of Park Avenue and Euclid expand? Or was it the monstrosity of a building at 541 Euclid Avenue that forced the relocation of this house?*
Perhaps all of my information is wrong – but I know there is someone out there that knows…
Ed Note: The mystery HAS been solved – and will be covered in a new blog post (I hope soon). The house is historic was moved to this site – more to come!
* In 1987, according to the Lexington Herald-Leader, a zone change was sought to allow for the construction of a two-story office building at the corner of Oldham and Euclid, where the ghastly structure shown above now sits. The parcel was a vacant lot at the time.
Thank you for posting this. This article clears up a little confusion in my mind. I was raised on Park Avenue the 400 block between Euclid and Columbia. The time would have been 1964 – 1986, so all of my “at home” years. I walked to Maxwell School and played in this neighborhood. I remember a house on the South East corner of Oldham and Euclid but I remember it suddenly gone. This would have been around first grade or 1969. A vacant lot was there well into the 1980s. The Euclid facing side of the shotgun I clearly remember. Where it was prior I do not know. It is obvious that the construction of it is not consistent with the neighboring houses. One possibility is that it was a dependency of another house. Another It might have been original construction but earlier than the rest of the neighborhood. Or it might have been moved from another location. If it was moved I do not know. The bungalow Yasmines was always there but to the left of it vacant. As for the gas station (standard oil) the boundary of the lot has not changed in any of my memory. The retail stores in there now are within the footprint of the gas station.
Our daughter owns and is restoring a house on this block of Oldham Ave. She loves this block because she can walk her dog in Woodland Park, and also walk to the grocery and nearly everything else you need.
The darling little shotgun in your article has a basement which may be rented out, but the owner, who also lives there, is a physician at the University of Kentucky Medical Center. Great neighbor! Great neighborhood!
The shotgun was moved to that site around 1981 or 1982. I lived just up the street at 354 Oldham from 1981-1985.
I was told that the reason the house sits backwards on the lot is that it’s placement on the moving truck made it physically impossible to unload the house with the correct orientation to the street. I can tell you some more stories… there was some weirdness going on there.
I agree that the building on the corner is an abomination. Complete failure to maximize opportunities presented by a wonderful site. More stories there, too.
The horrible looking building at the corner of Eculid and Oldham was built in the the early 1990s. It was under construction when we bought our house
The horrible looking building at the corner of Eculid and Oldham was built in the the early 1990s. It was under construction when we bought our house.