Every historic building has a story to tell
I feel vaguely guilty for daydreaming about a historic building torn down over 40 years ago – a building I never saw – when there are so many languishing historic buildings across Kentucky that deserve attention. Yet in the course of researching something else (always the case!), I came across a photograph of this house, (read more)
Category: Fayette County
Tags: #chilesburgky, #housemoving, #lexingtonky, #richardchiles
There’s not much that can beat a drive through verdant Kentucky countryside on a summer day. A few years ago, I was on my way back from somewhere (the location often isn’t as important as the trip along the way) when I decided to meander down a road adjacent to the Kentucky River in (read more)
Category: Estill County
Tags: #estillcountyky, #kentuckyarchitecture, #kentuckyplaces, #pryseky, #texolaky
Years ago, in a flat, flood-prone piece bottom land squeezed between Old Lawrenceburg Road and the Kentucky River, there sat a white frame house and a barn. I remember it, vaguely, in the days before smart phone cameras, when I was in Frankfort and driving out toward the East-West Connector. It wasn’t located in a (read more)
Category: Franklin County
Christmas is almost here! My advice to last-minute shoppers? Shop small and local. This morning, I took my minions on a small adventure to experience a retail store the way it used to be, with a visit to the cozy and historic R. L. Brown & Company Store on Main Street in Sharpsburg, Kentucky. This (read more)
Category: Bath County
Tags: #kentuckyarchitecture, #mainstreet, #sharpsburgky, #shoplocal
Although I am pretty familiar with downtown Frankfort, there are always interesting historic buildings to spy – or interesting details on buildings some might dismiss as ordinary or plain. Take this two-story frame house for example: a common form in domestic architecture across the Southeast, with different names in different locales. In Kentucky, we call (read more)
Category: Franklin County
Tags: #frankfortky, #kentuckyarchitecture, #vernaculararchitecure
I write too much about the death of historic buildings. But there are good stories out there, stories about historic buildings given new life, even stories where chocolate plays a big role (for me at least!). The day before Thanksgiving, my family and I sampled the tasty delights of the Hopewell Bake Exchange, housed in (read more)
Category: Bourbon County
Tags: #hopewellbakeexchange, #kentuckyarchitecture, #parisky
Recycling waste items – newspapers, plastic containers, glass and metal – has made inroads in communities across Kentucky. But the recycling of historic buildings just doesn’t seem to catch on – it is an elusive idea that seems downright alien to many towns and property owners. Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, long a champion of historic preservation, (read more)
Category: Marion County
To my chagrin, I’ve written more about the demolition of Second Empire style houses in Kentucky than I’ve penned stories about still-standing examples of the relatively rare style. Rare in the Commonwealth at least – due to a number of factors, the Second Empire style never really caught on in Kentucky – with the exception (read more)
Category: Montgomery County
Tags: #kentuckyarchitecture, #mtsterlingky, #SecondEmpirestyle, MansardMonday
A reader once commented that my tone in discussing changes made to a particular historic house was “negative.” I respectfully disagree. The observation and analysis that I carry out as an architectural historian does not stem from an inherent pessimism. Observing and detailing the exterior of historic buildings (and occasionally interiors as well), is what (read more)
Category: Clark County
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 (read more)
Category: Boyd County
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