Old Bank Building, Catlettsburg, Kentucky

There is a handsome, two-story brick building, with an impressive stone facade, in downtown Catlettsburg, Kentucky. From the design and monumental form of the building (even though it is small in scale, details and massing can be monumental!) my guess is that it was a bank. The three bay wide facade has pilasters flanking the recessed double-door entryway, and classically-inspired details including dentils and block modillions.  The entire facade has the feeling of a temple front (minus a grand portico). I especially like the rosettes at the cornice, and on the capitals of the pilasters.

Façade of my mystery building.

So why am I guessing as to its original function?* There is a dearth of historic data readily available on Catlettsburg, at least as far as someone like me (an architectural historian) would typically access. There’s no historic district, no digitized historic newspapers online, the Sanborn maps end at 1920, the survey inventory forms contain very little background information, and my local libraries have a dearth of books about this river town. There are some promising local histories, including Times Remembered: Catlettsburg, Kentucky 1849-1999 by Hazel Blanche Wright, but I have yet to find it – or any others – on the shelf anywhere but the Ashland Branch of the Boyd County Library.

The circa 1906 Gunnell Block building.

Alas, Ashland is too far away for a quick and easy jaunt. So these interesting buildings (there’s an awesome building right next door – see the above photo) worry away at me mentally, like a blister. It’s like one single mitten without its match, or a book missing its last chapter – I don’t know the story, and it is so frustrating. One day, I promise that irksome blister, I will tell the story of this building…(and what happened to its second story -don’t worry, I did note that modification.)

*A sign outside marks one of the building’s more recent functions as the John L. Haney Building, Laborers Local Union 1445.