Every historic building has a story to tell
I need a headlamp. Last night, around 9 pm, I doggedly continued layering newspapers (the Wall Street Journal, given a second life) on a new flower bed, and then topping those newspapers with mulch. But while I could appreciate the layered puzzle pieces of the tree branches silhouetted against the night sky, my own activities (read more)
Category: Gardens
Tags: Gardens, Kentucky gardening
My mind has swum with stories and names since, I feel, before I was born. Somehow, the storytelling urge passed to me, and I cloaked it in various academic guises first as an English major and then during my graduate school days. I never thought to enter those stories myself, but quite by chance (if (read more)
Although apple pie and baseball are frequently touted American symbols, I think that movies – and the historic buildings associated with the “moving pictures” – should be added to that list. A new middle class emerged in America in the first few decades of the 20th century, and increased leisure time (and disposable income) meant (read more)
Categories: Theaters, Whitley County
Tags: #historicmovietheater, #moviemagic, #thelanetheater, #WilliamsburgKY
Athens is a fairly quiet place these days. Not the Athens of the ancient world, mind you, but the one with the long A sound at the beginning, situated in southeastern Fayette County, Kentucky. First settled as Cross Plains in 1783, the crossroads town grew up at the intersection of two buffalo traces, later to (read more)
Categories: Fayette County, Kentucky Places
There’s something about springtime and fieldwork. Just like the earth reawakening after winter, so too does a historian’s desire to explore, document, and find stories. Old homesites, covered in multiflora rose and thickets rest of the year, show themselves to the world again by clumps of daffodils and hyacinths. In the past I’ve been lucky (read more)
Category: Kentucky architecture
Social organizations, like the Free Masons and Odd Fellows, played an important part in Kentucky communities during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The buildings constructed by these groups often remain as significant examples of vernacular architecture even if the lodge itself is no longer active. Such is the case with a wonderful two-story frame building with (read more)
Categories: African American History, Woodford County
Eyebrows are important. Whether they are shielding your eyes from detritus, or drawn together in frustration, they speak volumes. The same could be said for the eyebrow dormer on the roof of a historic dwelling. An eyebrow dormer is a low dormer on the slope of a roof with no sides, the roofing being carried (read more)
Categories: Architectural Terms, Kentucky architecture
I keep telling myself that all of this rain could be snow…but it’s not really helping. Due to the soggy blanket of rain draped over Central Kentucky this morning, we are pushing the Heart Bombing at the Palmer Pharmacy Building in Lexington, Kentucky, back to 4 pm today, Friday, February 16, 2018. This should allow (read more)
Categories: African American History, Fayette County
Tags: Dr. Zirl Plamer, heart bombing, Palmer Pharmacy, This Place Matters
Six years ago, in Buffalo, New York, “heart bombing” was born. The Buffalo Young Preservationists “decided to showcase their love for abandoned and vacant historic buildings in their city by papering them with handmade Valentines.” On Friday, February 16, 2018, at 4 pm, a group of people will shower the Dr. Zirl Palmer Pharmacy Building (read more)
Categories: African American History, Fayette County
Tags: Dr Zirl Palmer, heart bombing, Ovan Haskins
When the cornerstone was laid for what is now Shiloh Baptist Church in 1923, it was proclaimed “one of the city’s most handsome edifices.” The stately, Beaux Arts/classical style church, built in a yellow brick, was the long-awaited dream of the Fifth Street Baptist Church, which had begun as a satellite branch of First Baptist (read more)
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