Every historic building has a story to tell
There will be a Juneteenth celebration tonight, June 19, 2020, in Lexington, Kentucky, at African Cemetery No. 2. Juneteenth traces its origins back to Galveston, Texas where on June 19, 1865, Union soldiers arrived in the city with news that the Civil War had ended and enslaved persons were now free. The Emancipation Proclamation had (read more)
Although I grew up traveling frequently to Mercer County, Kentucky, to visit my grandparents and other family members, it wasn’t until I was a teenager that I first rode on US 68. My mother, a native of Harrodsburg, was in a wreck on the twisting, winding road when she was in high school, and (read more)
The Second Empire style, with its distinctive mansard roof, is not a common architectural style in the Bluegrass State. When I spot an example in my travels around Kentucky, I tend to remember. News of the demolition of an eye-catching Second Empire house in Richmond, Kentucky, reached me over a week ago – a house (read more)
Categories: Demolition, Madison County
Tags: demolition by neglect, Richmond Kentucky, Richmond Register, Scooby Doo House
Back before the Covid-19 Pandemic, daycare centers closing, and work from home, we commuted five days a week. A ritual developed of noting landmarks along our route, and no rural landmark was more popular (or sad), than what my toddler coined as “the Falling-Down house.” Sewell Shop, a crossroads community on US 60 near the (read more)
This past December, I wrote a piece entitled “Sound Travels in the Country,” about growing up in the country, and what it means to hear the plaintive wail of an ambulance on a stretch of road that is all family farms. Today I heard that ambulance as I ran to my car, and I knew (read more)
Category: Uncategorized
My grandmother, a lifelong Warren Countian who died in the same room in which she was born, often spoke of a great-uncle, ‘Tom-Doc.’ Call him what you will, Thomas Benton Greathouse was the family eccentric and/or black sheep. During my childhood, she would point out the location of his shack, on land later owned by (read more)
Categories: Allen County, Warren County
Tags: alms house, poor farm, Poorhouse
One of the things I love most about my profession is the chance to travel around Kentucky and talk to people about the historic places they hold dear – and see the buildings that make those places. So I am very excited to introduce my friend and guest author, J. Eric Thomason, an 8th generation (read more)
Category: Warren County
Tag: Guest author
It’s been quite a spring – and I’m not even talking about the scariness that is COVID-19, quarantines, and work from home (“work” is laced with irony – with schools and daycares closed, working full-time, or even part-time, has become impossible). No, it’s been a spring full of color and beauty. I haven’t seen daffodils (read more)
Category: Gardens
Tag: Kentucky gardens
As I type this, a cacophony of sound mills about me – the rain striking the windows, thunder off in the distance, a screaming baby, the sound of the sump pump working to keep our cellar dry(ish) – and I am thinking about old houses, open to the elements and crumpling more into the ground (read more)
Categories: Abandoned houses, Fleming County
Small rural churches are a dying breed across Kentucky, and many parts of America. When congregations dwindle or services cease, the building often follows suit. I’ve recorded many abandoned frame churches across the Commonwealth, so it’s always a delight to find a rural church that appears to still be in use – and better yet, (read more)
Categories: Clark County, Kentucky churches
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