Every historic building has a story to tell
Much like the rest areas of today’s modern automobile travel, or the busy interchange laden with fast food options, the roadside tavern beckoned to the weary 18th and 19th travelers. Don’t be misled! It was much more than your friendly neighborhood bar.[1] Taverns provided lodging, food, and a gathering spot for the local community – (read more)
I cried piteously on the first day of kindergarten, as my mother left me with a room of strange adults and even stranger children. My mother and the comforts of home were promptly forgotten, however, and I threw myself enthusiastically into, if not academics at that tender age, at least into the new experience. By (read more)
Technology may be shrinking our globe, and social media providing connections heretofore not possible, but with the global village (thank you Marshall McLuhan) comes the disappearance of many actual physical places and communities (not to mention language, cultural identity, and sense of place). The contraction of rural places has been happening in Kentucky since World (read more)
One of the significant historic aspects of Kentucky is its numerous crossroad communities and hamlets, located scant miles apart along a county’s road or waterway networks. This collection of buildings, surrounded by farmland, may indeed be located at the juncture of two roads, but could also be located near a ford in a river, or (read more)
Categories: Abandoned Kentucky, Crossroad communities, Kentucky architecture, Kentucky Places
Tags: KY, Livingston County, Lola, Western Kentucky
When I began researching my thesis (ages ago), which focused on two antebellum farms and their landscape, I realized that my Kentucky was a state with many souls, and personalities. Her landscape, I discovered, was one of “enormous geographic contradictions.” These disparate elements, from east to west, and nestled in the bluegrass basin that cradled (read more)
Categories: Bluegrass, Crossroad communities, Vernacular
Tags: Country stores, crossroad communities, Stores, vernacular architecture
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