Every historic building has a story to tell
Years ago, I helped document a farm with a great 19th century stone and frame bank barn (a bank barn is one that is set into the side of a hill, so you can access the barn from the lower level, usually reserved for livestock, or the upper level). On the lower level, which was (read more)
Category: Franklin County
Tags: #farm, #historicbarns, #kentuckyarchitecture, #kentuckybarns, barns
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
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
Shortly after Christmas 1901, a news article pondered whether Kentucky’s legislators would finally “erect at Frankfort buildings which will be a credit, instead of a disgrace, to Kentucky.” The State Capitol Building was criticized as too small (among other faults), and the Governor’s mansion had been severely damaged by fire in 1899.* Lexington and Louisville (read more)
Category: Franklin County
Tags: #frankfortky, #kentuckycapitol, #kentuckygovernorsmansion
I recently spent an afternoon happily perusing documents, maps, and photographs at the Capital City Museum in Frankfort (a wonderful place if you’ve never been) when my attention was diverted by a black and white photograph of a young family. Solemn in front of the camera, their house provided a perfect backdrop to their small (read more)
Category: Franklin County
Ten years ago, I wrote my first National Register of Historic Places nomination. Since then, I’ve authored dozens – and to the best of my knowledge, not one of those buildings has been torn down. Until now. Last week, I heard that a small Gothic Revival house in Frankfort, Kentucky, once part of a large (read more)
Category: Franklin County
Tags: Gothic Revival, Orlando Brown, summer homes
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)
Categories: Franklin County, Kentucky architecture, Mercer County, Outbuildings, Russell County
Tag: chicken houses
Romance never goes out of style. Your views on the subject may change, depending on age and experience, but romance figures large in the human condition – and in architecture. The Romantic movement in America roughly spans the period from 1820 to 1880 – a time of great change in our young country. Even as (read more)
Historic preservation can sometimes be a troubling, even divisive term. I haven’t heard it used in a while, but the term “hysterical” preservationist was bandied about quite a bit, and I am sure still is in certain circles. A common misconception is that preservation supporters want to stop time, and freeze every historic building so (read more)
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