Every historic building has a story to tell
On Friday, March 1, 1907, a “disastrous fire” tore through the Lawrenceburg Hotel and the Saloon of Mr. S.R. Howser, located within the hotel. The two-story frame building, built in 1881, was destroyed by the blaze, causing more than $25,000 in losses. By 1908, however, a new, brick building, with stone accents, stood on the (read more)
Categories: Anderson County, Bourbon, Railroads
Tags: #bourbontrail, #kentuckyarchitecture, #lawrenceburghotel, #lawrenceburgky, #railroadhotel, #stanfordky
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
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’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)
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’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)
I’m fascinated by mid-century American motels – complete with motor court, a fun name, and ideally, an appealing neon sign. These standalone motor courts are cool, but what’s really intriguing are the few examples I’ve seen of mid-century motels built around a historic 19th century house. Maybe it’s the juxtaposition between the large single family (read more)
In the mid-19th century, it became popular in rural America for farmers of a certain class to name their farms – usually with evocatively pastoral names – sometimes referencing landscape elements found at the site. The Cedars, Elmwood, Mt. Pleasant: all names of Bluegrass farms that crop up often. Hedgeland, though, is not one I’ve (read more)
Columns, I think, more than any other architectural element, are the stuff of dreams, glory, and status. Not too surprising, given that most of the columns we see on buildings around us trace their lineage back to Classical architecture, and those innovative Greeks and Romans. Columns are decorative and structural, and when used properly, can transform (read more)
Kentucky is a land of churches: big historic churches, built in the style popular at the time; small country churches; and churches in storefronts in small downtowns. All shapes and sizes of historic churches spread out over our 120 counties. Many historic church buildings though, are vacant, demolished, or transformed with a new use. The (read more)
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