Every historic building has a story to tell
As I look out of my window onto a warm, sunny day with gusts of wind that presage the winter storm moving our way, I wish the weather wasn’t so nice. Instead of sugarplums, there are a dozen ideas dancing in my head, begging to be written and shared. Dahlias, drive-in move theaters, flamboyant architects, (read more)
One of my enduring Christmas habits is listening to Truman Capote’s “A Christmas Memory” in a lamplit room alone with only my own memories. As Truman Capote recites in his high-pitched sing-song voice, with 2020 stripped to its barest essentials, and Christmas rapidly approaching, I cannot help but think of holiday traditions of years past (read more)
Categories: Guest Post, Kentucky architecture, Kentucky history, Warren County
Tag: Christmas
One of the most fulfilling aspects of writing this blog is hearing from people with personal connections to and knowledge of the buildings I feature. Three years ago, I wrote about an interesting house I spied as I drove through Campton, Kentucky. There was no paperwork associated with the house in the usual archives I (read more)
Category: Wolfe County
Tags: Campton High School, Martin Hiram Taulbee, Wolfe County High School
Bungalow mania gripped most of the United States in the first three decades of the 20th century. The versatile house type appealed to homeowners, developers, and architects alike – and the historic advertisements for what was essentially an unpretentious building form bring joy to any lover of purple prose and hyperbole. One California-based architect, F. (read more)
Categories: Fayette County, Kentucky architecture
Tags: #DrRalphNelsonMaxson, #FGBrown, #housebeautiful, #TransylvaniaPark, bungalow
This morning, I pulled a small greeting card – the last of its box – from my stationery drawer in anticipation of sending it off in the mail. I lingered for a while before putting pen to paper, looking at the snow-covered scene, with its red barns and other outbuildings, a silo, a line of (read more)
Categories: Farming, Kentucky agriculture
In 1903, William F. Heathman established the Clintonville Farmers Bank. Heathman, then in his 60s, was a farmer, county supervisor, postmaster, and Civil War veteran. As I drove through Clintonville on a gray February morning last year and saw the pocket-sized brick building with a distinctive parapet, I knew immediately it was an old bank. (read more)
Category: Bourbon County
Tags: historic bank, William F. Heathman
Years ago, I documented a fading beauty of a house and listened with interest (schooling my face into an impassive mask) as I was informed that the reason for its decline was a battle among the heirs to the house and farm. The narrator of this sad tale was none other than the “spurned heir” (read more)
Categories: Demolition, Mason County
Tags: Andrew Cox, Rebekah Hord
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
A few years ago, I started an occasional series aimed at looking behind the perfection of the façade of a historic house. Sometimes the story that is told by the backside of a building varies greatly from the staid front! In 1939, Frances Benjamin Johnston, an American photographer, captured beautiful black and white images of (read more)
At the beginning of the 20th century, the Grayson County School Board embarked on an ambitious school building campaign across the west-central Kentucky county. Around 100 one-room schools were ultimately constructed, serving schoolchildren in scattered, small, rural communities. One of the survivors is the one-story, 30-foot long Walnut Grove School, built in 1911. Since my (read more)
Categories: Grayson County, Schools
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