Every historic building has a story to tell
I’ve been lucky to travel extensively around the United States and Europe – but heart-stopping places are often the ones closest to home. A few years ago, I spent several weeks in far-western Kentucky, exploring the farms and crossroads communities of Livingston County. I fell in love with one rural hamlet in particular, which retained (read more)
I started this blog as a way to share the amazing places and stories I’ve been lucky enough to experience – mostly across my native Kentucky, but also from other places around the world. As a professional architectural historian, most of my work – gathered over weeks of trudging through towns or across farm fields, (read more)
Category: Kentucky
Urban chicken-keeping has been a trending topic for several years now, but the hipsters tending their leghorns and Rhode Island Reds are merely part of a cycle. Chicken houses were once a ubiquitous sight not just on farmsteads, abut also in towns. If you keep your eyes peeled, you may even spot some historic (over 50 (read more)
I would be hard pressed to choose my favorite architectural term – but dentil comes pretty close to the top of my list. Even if you didn’t wonder about the similarity between dentil and dental (the word is derived from the Latin “dentes,” meaning teeth), looking at a neat, orderly band of blocks ornamenting a (read more)
Category: Architecture
Tags: architectural terms, dentils
This not a post about Miley Cyrus and her 2013 hit – although there are some similarities between the breaking of a relationship and the fracturing of a neighborhood. Demolitions, neglect, absentee landlords – each element chips away at the structure and fabric of a community, and as buildings fall, a piece of that community (read more)
I will always associate Edinburgh with Christmas. The capital city of Scotland boasts an impressive history, and the architecture ranges from ancient to avant-garde, which creates an exciting (if sometimes contentious) city environment. But for me, the flavor of Edinburgh – and I include the smog of roasting malt that drifts across the city – (read more)
Tags: #christmastravels, Edinburgh, Scotland
I detoured off of the bypass around Versailles yesterday afternoon to drive through town – bypasses aren’t known for their pleasing aesthetics. After dilly-dallying a bit, I set off for Lexington, and caught in a dense row of cars heading east, I couldn’t stop when I saw the bulldozers chomping through the brick building that (read more)
I’ve enjoyed a lifelong love affair with mail-order catalogs. The arrival of the mail meant a 1/4 mile hike down the gravel driveway to the big metal mailbox (an enticing target for mailbox baseball players), and back up the hill again holding the treasure (secured by at least two large rubber bands) of three daily (read more)
Researching historic buildings is still an exercise that involves books (usually old and in the case of deed books, with varying levels of legible handwriting), lots of conversation (if you are lucky!), and patience. I employ many tactics to tease out the story of buildings for my day job, a luxury I can’t always indulge (read more)
Dr. Zirl Palmer’s Pharmacy at the corner of East Fifth and Chestnut Streets, most recently the home of the Catholic Action Center, is a building significant for the role it played in segregated Lexington, and for its design – but neither attribute will save it from demolition. Lexington doesn’t have the best record for valuing (read more)
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