Every historic building has a story to tell
The drone of the cicadas (Brood 14 is in full voice after 17 years of dormancy!) and the sudden escalation in temperatures makes me think of hazy August days, winding down a rural Kentucky road. I came across the Lick Spring United Baptist Church and the neighboring Prater Cemetery on one such August afternoon. (read more)
Category: Magoffin County
Tags: #kentuckyarchitecture, #magoffincountyky, #ruralchurchesofkentucky
It’s been an odd spring. Actually, odd is becoming (has ready become?) the new normal. We’ve been very wet, and lest you think I am relying on my handwritten notes recounting rainfall amounts (scribbled on the calendar on our fridge), greater minds than mine confirm my assessment. Lexington has received 20 inches of rain since (read more)
Category: Kentucky Gardens
Tags: #garden, #kentuckygardens
One of the fun facts I recall learning in elementary school – after memorizing all 120 counties, which has actually been beneficial in my career – is that Kentucky has, after Alaska, more navigable miles of water than any other state in the country. Without these waterways, the development of Kentucky in the late 18th (read more)
Category: Jessamine County
Tags: #jessaminecountyky, #kentuckyarchitecture, #kentuckyindustry, Mills
One of the things I love most about the study of vernacular architecture is how the same form or plan of a house can be built over long spans of time, so that a house built in 1831 in Nelson County, Kentucky, can look quite similar to a house built in 1805 in Fayette County, (read more)
Category: Nelson County
Mother’s Day was yesterday, and I celebrated by working almost all day in the garden. This circa 1914 holiday is a curious oddity to me, as it was most stridently not celebrated in my childhood home. When other children worked on Mother’s Day cards in elementary school, I made a birthday card for my mother. (read more)
Category: Kenton County
I love taking photographs of historic buildings. I do not love labeling my digital images. There are 112 folders in my “Kentucky Counties” file, containing 63,932 jpegs, which take up an estimated 183 gigabytes on my hard drive. I am well aware of my failings, however, and I try to “pop in” to a (read more)
Category: Clark County
I am incontrovertibly incapable of research without distractions. If I am searching through historic newspapers on a specific hunt, I never fail to scan the whole page, eyes roving for any interesting tidbit. This is, of course, not without its drawbacks, but since I am also a compulsive list maker, I just add these (read more)
Category: Jefferson County
It’s a busy Monday, and amid the bustle of work and life, I don’t know when I will be able to write a blog post. But I have determined to steal 15 minutes and share this lovely historic house, in hopes that it brings some joy to your day. Built in 1901 for an (read more)
Category: Louisville
Tags: #historicdistrict, #kentuckyarchitecture, #louisvilleky, #oldlouisville, #stjamesbelgravia
The circa 1894 Covington Brothers Wholesale Grocery Building in Paducah, Kentucky, at the corner of Jefferson and North Third Streets, is facing a likely emergency demolition. Is there anyone in Paducah who could go take some photographs of all elevations of the building for me before its destruction? The three story brick building, home (read more)
Category: McCracken County
Tags: #demolitionbyneglect, #kentuckyarchitecture, #paducahky
Spring weather in Kentucky is always unpredictable, but when the meteorologists started predicting rainfall amounts last week, my breath caught. On the second of April, I was up most of the night monitoring the tornado warnings. The rain started on Thursday, April 3, 2025. By the end of the day on Friday, our rain gauge (read more)
Category: Franklin County
Tags: #april2025floods, #kentuckyfloods
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