Every historic building has a story to tell
Last year at this time, I admired the row of lime trees at Chatsworth, exclaimed over the profusion of perennials and the striking color combinations in the walled garden at Parham, and drooled over the terraced beauty of the landscape at Renishaw Hall. Although I adored Petworth House, the Capability Brown landscape did not inspire (read more)
A recent article on Facebook listing 12 beautiful barns in the Bluegrass caught my eye the other day. Excited, I clicked, scrolled, and then I sighed. While I am always happy to see articles extolling Kentucky’s amazing buildings, I didn’t think this list was…all that great. I am in a different position than many when (read more)
Categories: Barns, Farming, Historic Preservation, Kentucky architecture, Log construction, Mercer County, Vernacular
Tags: barns, farming, Kentucky barns, Log construction
My parents inflicted a succession of ugly, misshapen station wagons upon us hapless children during my formative years. The one I remember most vividly was a putrid shade of pale yellow, appeared longer than a school bus, and was known as “the Tank.” It was in the Tank (the way back- station wagons in those (read more)
Gardening, to me, is intuitive. And yet it isn’t something to which words flow easily. I can write about houses, and places, and styles of architecture, but gardening is something done, a retreat from thoughts, the clamor of the world, and sometimes, a retreat even from myself. Gardening is what I do to escape from (read more)
As a child coming to Lexington, I was always fascinated by the buildings I saw in the distance, even more so then the lovely historic homes that lined the roadway. North Broadway/Paris Pike was our main route into town most days, and back on Loudon Avenue was a large, brick angled structure with signs painted (read more)
Categories: Bluegrass, Farming, Fayette County, Kentucky architecture, Lexington
Tags: E.B. Drake, Night-Riders, tobacco, warehouse
In 1970, Lucy Coleman Johnston Graves confronted a bulldozer about to tear down a house on West High Street in Lexington, Kentucky. The photograph made The New York Times, and further cemented Graves’ reputation as a determined preservationist. Forty-five years later, the organization she helped found bestowed its 2015 Lucy Graves Advocacy Award to another (read more)
The familiar landscape is the one that often receives the least notice. But when that landscape changes, the disorientation strikes with ferocity, and a palpable sense of loss. For all my love of crossroad communities – places not quite a town, grown organically at the intersection of two roads – the one closest to me (read more)
Categories: Clark County, Country Store, Crossroad communities, Kentucky architecture, Vernacular
Tags: Clark County, Crump, Dykes, Sewell Shop
The vestiges of our past are scattered all around the Kentucky landscape – even if you must sometimes you must venture off of the paved road to find them. Rural Hart County presented such a detour – and the additional dubious joys of rampant poison ivy and snakes. But it was worth it to document (read more)
This post was originally written for the Smitten by Britain website I loved Frances Hodgson Burnett’s A Secret Garden when I was growing up – and I still haven’t lost the dream of one day having my own walled garden. (A garden ideally free from the rampages of dogs, and graced with perfect soil and (read more)
Architecture is much more than just shelter – it teems with symbolism. One of the first principles I learned in graduate school was the power of a building, and what messages the style, form, and materials convey about the owner or user. During the heady years after World War II, the United States boomed, and (read more)
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