Every historic building has a story to tell
President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s New Deal – a series of projects and programs instituted in the United States between 1933 and 1938 – was responsible for the construction of 139 schools, gymnasiums, and athletic fields in Eastern Kentucky. That is just in one part of Kentucky. Nearly all of our 120 counties once had a (read more)
Category: Rowan County
Tags: #farmersky, #historicschools, #kentuckyarchitecture, #worksprogressadministration, WPA
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
Two years ago, after an exhausting day battling bush honeysuckle, ticks, and the heat, my friend Eric and I roamed about Edmonson County, Kentucky, looking for interesting historic buildings. We found plenty, but the most interesting was the former home of U.S. Representative Beverly Mills Vincent (1890-1980). The early 20th century house is lovely, (read more)
Category: Edmonson County
Tags: #beverlymillsvincent, #brownsvilleky, #edmonsoncountyky, #kentuckyarchitecture
January is usually a hard month, and the weather so far has not helped – Kentucky has been wet and cold, and then cold and wet. Thankfully, it is Whimsical Wednesday, so I shall lift my spirits (and hopefully yours?) with the fabulous J.N. Struck House. Built in 1893 by J.N. Struck, a contractor and (read more)
Categories: Jefferson County, Louisville
Tags: #highlandshistoricdistrict, #jnstruck, #kentuckyarchitecture, #louisvilleky
After several years of vacancy, there might hope of rebirth for the former Epworth Methodist Church in Lexington, Kentucky. Located at the corner of North Martin Luther King Boulevard and Rand Avenue, the circa 1918 church has seen its share of different users, and a new development plan proposes to convert the church into 20 (read more)
There’s not much that can beat a drive through verdant Kentucky countryside on a summer day. A few years ago, I was on my way back from somewhere (the location often isn’t as important as the trip along the way) when I decided to meander down a road adjacent to the Kentucky River in (read more)
Category: Estill County
Tags: #estillcountyky, #kentuckyarchitecture, #kentuckyplaces, #pryseky, #texolaky
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
Christmas is almost here! My advice to last-minute shoppers? Shop small and local. This morning, I took my minions on a small adventure to experience a retail store the way it used to be, with a visit to the cozy and historic R. L. Brown & Company Store on Main Street in Sharpsburg, Kentucky. This (read more)
Category: Bath County
Tags: #kentuckyarchitecture, #mainstreet, #sharpsburgky, #shoplocal
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
I write too much about the death of historic buildings. But there are good stories out there, stories about historic buildings given new life, even stories where chocolate plays a big role (for me at least!). The day before Thanksgiving, my family and I sampled the tasty delights of the Hopewell Bake Exchange, housed in (read more)
Category: Bourbon County
Tags: #hopewellbakeexchange, #kentuckyarchitecture, #parisky
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