Every historic building has a story to tell
Last night, a massive, five-alarm fire consumed a distinctive three-story brick building on Cumberland Avenue, most recently used as a storage warehouse for Cardwell Furniture. Built in 1906 by Sam and Herman Weinstein, the building formed part of the distinctive town square/center of downtown Middlesboro, with L-shaped buildings on each side of the intersection of (read more)
Category: Bell County
Tags: #kentuckyarchitecture, #middlesboroky, #weinsteinbuilding
At the intersection of US 60/13th Street, Algonquin Avenue, and Blackburn Avenue in Ashland, stands a wonderful early 20th century Tudor Revival style building, constructed as a commercial/residential building to serve newly developing suburbs south of downtown. The triangular shaped parcel on which the building rests allowed it address the confluence of streets around (read more)
Category: Boyd County
The Center Hill School, completed in the summer of 1918, ushered in a new age of rural school consolidation. Five smaller schools, Centerville, Clays Crossroads, Hill, Hyson, and Jacksonville, were closed to make way for one large school per precinct. And the building that would house the students from these smaller schools was handsome, (read more)
Category: Bourbon County
What attracts a person to a specific type of architecture? If not ornament, then how does the shape and scale of a building speak to a viewer? There’s an A-frame house I’ve passed by hundreds of times – as a child, I found it odd, yet appealing. As an adult, I wonder how on earth (read more)
Category: Greenup County
I grew up steeped in history, stories, and the Presbyterian Church (note: this is not a proselytizing post). My mother may have moved to her husband’s hometown, surrounded by what seemed like hundreds of his kinfolk, all attendees of the local First Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), but she was not going to give (read more)
Category: Mercer County
Tags: #harrodsburgky, #kentuckyarchitecture, #McAfee, #nationalregisterofhistoricplaces
I voted early this year, in a large, cavernous space that bore no resemblance to precinct voting as I used to know it. For several years, I worked the polls in Lexington, supplementing the meager salary I received as a state employee with a long, long day in a historic firehouse or a local school. (read more)
Category: Rowan County
Tags: #kentuckyarchitecture, #RowanCountyKY, #votinghouses, #worksprogressadministration
Here’s a little secret: In addition to the 496 blog posts on this site, I have a folder of 78 drafts. Most of them have no title, or identifying notations from the preview window, so I must click on each “no title” entry to discover what on earth I saved eight years ago and never (read more)
Category: Warren County
Tags: #bowlinggreenky, #kentuckyarchitecture, #motorcourt, #roadsidearchitecture
As I’ve groused many times before, the problem with taking so many photographs of historic buildings is labelling those photographs. But how to choose the best sort of label/name that will survive changes in ownership, land divisions, or (most frightening) technology changes that render my thousands of photographs obsolete? This point was driven home to (read more)
The oldest brick building in Booneville, Kentucky, was built in 1888 as a general store. Today, it is a resplendent sight in the small county seat town (population around 168 in 2020). The two-story, front gable building is three bays wide, with pilasters separating the segmentally arched openings on the facade. The original 2/2 wooden (read more)
Category: Owsley County
Tags: #boonevilleky, #kentuckyarchitecture, #nationalregisterofhistoricplaces
I’m always partial to a house with personality. The William and Ella Craycroft McElroy House, with its distinctive near-diamond shaped footprint, exudes character and charm. The 2.5-story, frame, Queen Anne style house was built between 1898 and 1903 on Main Street in Springfield, Kentucky. The first time I saw this delightful concoction, I wondered (read more)
Category: Washington County
Tags: #kentuckyarchitecture, #queenannestyle, #springfieldky
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