Demolition Files: The Malone and Martin Buildings, Greenville, Muhlenberg County, Kentucky

Sometimes you are in the right place at the right time, and are blissfully oblivious of this fact. Last Tuesday, in my large straw hat, clutching two cameras, I made my way through downtown Greenville, Kentucky, the county seat of Muhlenberg County. I always take the long road home, visiting towns I don’t know, and occasionally finding a rural treasure that necessitates stopping in the middle of the road for an opportunistic photograph. Yesterday, I shared one of my finds, a delicious commercial building with a facade brilliant in glazed blue tile on Instagram – only to find out that it (and an adjacent building, both listed in the National Register of Historic Places ) was torn down in the wee hours the day after my visit.

Earlier this year, a fire destroyed the large corner buildings that backed up to the two pictured above (note empty lot on right side of the photo) burned.  The Thomas C. Summers and J.L. Rogers Buildings on Main Cross Street were both engulfed by flames in April 2022 and later razed.

As is too often the case, a verdict was reached that the two surviving buildings couldn’t remain standing, so around 2:30 on the morning of July 20, 2022, they too were razed.

I do not know how bad the damage was from the fire in the spring, and local governments have a responsibility to keep the public safe. If the property owner could not secure the building envelope and restore the structure, then sometimes demolition is the only alternative.

What’s so distressing about this is not just the impact – and huge hole –  that this leaves in small Greenville (population 4,233), but that these buildings (with some thought and imagination) need not have been consigned to the landfill. Even deconstruction would have salvaged valuable building materials that could have been reused.

A fire recently consumed a large swath of downtown Millersburg, Kentucky, and I was fortunate enough to be privy to the behind-the-scenes-efforts of preservationists and lovers of historic buildings to help salvage the irreplaceable building materials from that tragedy. It won’t replace the buildings, but it does save a small piece of the past.

The two-story brick building at 108 North Main Street, the one that immediately caught my eye with its striking blue facade, was part of the “Modernize Main Street” movement that swept across America in the mid-20th century. Property owners used new materials to update historic buildings and appeal to shoppers that  may have been drawn to new shopping centers far removed from the central business district.

W.C .Malone, a local saw mill & lumber yard proprietor and contractor, was responsible for this resplendent burst of chic mid-century on Main Street (he also donated the land for Lake Malone State Park, where I spent a few wonderful days when I was nine years old, and went home quite sunburned).

The Martin Building boasted a more conventional early 20th century facade, with painted brick rising up two stories to a corbelled cornice. The circa 1907 building was originally home to the Martin Dry Goods Company.

Historic downtowns are defined by rebuilding campaigns. Buildings frequently burned in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, necessitating the reinvention of the commercial heart of a town. The problem is that now reinvention usually doesn’t happen – and if rebuilding does take place, it is so often soulless and out of scale and place.

I didn’t know, of course, that barely a week after I squinted at these buildings under the unforgiving July sun that I would be struggling to write their obituaries. And what a dismal memorial this is! I know that this corner of buildings was well-known and well-loved by many residents of Greenville, and I just happened to catch the last two survivors on their last day of existence.