Just across the Ohio from Louisville sits Clarksville and Jeffersonville. Jeffersonville offers suburban style resturants and hotels along the river, while Clarksville offers grit and several miles of park land on the river. We stayed in Jeffersonville, as it is close to downtown with the suburban price and downtown Louisville is very car friendly.

 

King Fish...the Jeffersonville most people see

 

A condo tower offers views of the Louisville skyline

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

To become a pedestrian bridge

 

 

 

 

 

 

Downtown has a good number of infill projects, although most arn't too exciting

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This develop seems to be big in the Louisville market, with projects across from Slugger Field, etc

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The city/county building takes ques from Mansfield

 

 

So, there you go.

Looks pleasant enough.

Agreed.

So this is Lousville's Covington?

^More or less, although it is far less urban than Covington, and hasn't seen as much investment along the river. Prehaps it is in porportion when comparing Cincy and Looahvuhl.

Nothing could be more different from whats across the river than Southern Indiana and Northern Kentucky.

 

That hotel area where the high rise is at and the Kingfish (which is pretty sad if anyone remembers the original faux riverboat Kingfishes..this is a local chain in Louisville)...well  that is all pretty recent.  As late as the 1980s that stretch of the river, west of downtown Jeff and the Big Four Bridge, was really rustic and wooded, with some river rat houses, but very underdeveloped.  Clarksville really doesnt start until the other side of the levee, and the town looks to be mostly 1920s at the oldest...there is no true riverfront in Clarksville.  Truley Gertrude Steins saying about Oakland applys in spades to Clarksville...there is no there there...the place is mostly suburban developement.

 

(though there is this really neat natural history museum or interpretive center at the Falls of the Ohio..an interstate state park jointly run by Indiana and Kentucky (the falls are in KY, while the mainland part of the park is in Indiana).

 

Jeff itself is pleasant as it has a fairly nice riverfront, where they use a floodwall rather than levee, so parts of the town are on the 'wrong side" of the floodwall, sort of the like The Point in Covington (but not as old or dense).

 

The Indiana side was a big steamboat building center, mainly Jeff and New Albany, and there is still that big JeffBoat shipyard east of downtown, where they build barges and towboats, and a barge line is HQed in Jeff, too..American Barge Lines. JeffBoats predecessor was Howard Shipyards, and the Howard Mansion still exists, as a "Steamboat Musuem"

 

 

The inside has all sorts of gingerbread made by Howards shipbuilder/carpenters.

 

Jeff's other claim to fame is the original town plat, which was by Thomas Jefferson hisself.  The plan was a checkerboard, if you can visualize a red& black checkerboard as a plat, but with all the red squares as parklan or open space. So this would have been one of the more unusual town plans since Savannah, but it was never followed, with the open squares being replatted for town lots.

 

For the Southern Indiana town of some size one has to go over to New Albany, which is sort of off to one side, below the falls, sort of across the river from the Portland neighborhood in Louisville.

 

Also that big bridge that is going to be turned into a pedestrian walkway (the Big Four)...there was a proposal from the early 70s to hang prefab housing units on it, sort of like those old bridges in Europe that people live on (like the Ponte Vecchio in Florence).  A truely outside the box idea, which even made it into a bood, Unbuilt America. 

 

Other quirky things in Jeff...the old state prison turned into a Colgate/Palmolive soap factory (with the big clock)...the old quartermaster depot with its brick quadrangle, turned into a big flea market.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Thanks for the info! I was improperly informed that Colgate was in Clarksville. It looks pretty cool from Louisville, on that walkway over the interstate. I hope they do something with that train bridge, it would be nice to have another option besides the (3rd st?) bridge.

I'm not really sure if Colgate is in Clarksville or Jeff, but yeah..the place is a landmark.  The bridge you walked across (occasionally people commit suicide by jumping from it) is the 2nd Street Bridge, or Municiple Bridge, or the Clark Bridge.  I think most folks call it the 2nd Street Bridge.  It has those  art deco pylons with the carved fasces at the approaches.

 

 

2nd Street, okay, truely a cool bridge, the little station house on the Indiana side has always caught my eye. I walked across it last year, but this year just drove it, many times.

 

Do you know what the park/lookout area over the interstate is? It is just past those light house towers on Main, and a long sloped pathway lines up with one of the streets 4th, 5th, or so. There are arches leading up, and an Clark statue, I believe.

Do you know what the park/lookout area over the interstate is? It is just past those light house towers on Main, and a long sloped pathway lines up with one of the streets 4th, 5th, or so. There are arches leading up, and an Clark statue, I believe.

 

The Riverfront Plaza and Belvedere.  I knew it in an earlier version, as it appears to have been recently remodeled.

 

There is a long history behind it.

 

The first plan was to do a “City Beautiful” type of park, sort of a Grant Park approach, along the river.  This was in the 1930s.

 

Then in the late ‘50s and early ‘60s Reynolds Aluminum was going to put their corporate HQ there, with a big marina and apartments as well as offices.  This was nixed by the COE due to navigation issues.  Reynolds then relocated to Richmond, VA.

 

Finally in the late ‘60s this Riverfront plan was finalized, designed by a Greek planner named Doxiades.  I think it was opened in 1972.  The buildings around it...the two high rises (Galt House and..at that time.. Louisville Trust), the low rise (American Life), and the tall black tower across Main Street (at that time First National Bank), where all built at the same time, so it was this coordinated urban ensemble. 

 

The loss here is that the oldest skyscraper in Louisville was torn down in the process (at 4th and Main), as well as two blocks of old cast iron storefronts along Main.

 

 

During the 1970s Riverfront Plaza was a popular festival site, sort of like what is happening on Newport By the Levee, with ethnic festivals, bluegrass concerts, outdoor concerts by the orchestra, and so forth.  It was the centerpiece of downtown until they built the Galleria.  This and the wharf down on the river was about the only public access to the river downtown as the riverfront down there was all bulk terminals, scrapyards, Port of Louisville warehouses, railroad stuff.  Really grungy and chaotic.

 

The Belvedere as I remember it had this plaza with a reflecting pool with a decorative wavey/watery terrazzo design.  The step up to the river (to clear the interstate) happened via a set of fountains and waterfall and this walkway made of “concrete lilly pads” (or you could take the ramp).  This was a popular feature…and the fountain at the top could go pretty high, and was lit at night.

 

So the fountains and waterfalls and the surrounding buildings worked together to create this modernist urban square.

 

They would also drain the reflecting pool during festivals and use it for seating for a stage (this was where the orchestra peformed). In the winter the pool was an ice skating rink.

 

To the west, beyond an arcaded walkway was a green space.  There used to be these curvey walkways and little trees there (how they got these trees to grow is beyond me as this is on top of a parking garage).  This was the “quite” informal area, though they sometimes had stages and a “beer garden” there during the festivals.  At the west end was an admin building and police station, which had a great stained glass wall.

 

Walking north, through or past the fountains & waterfalls, one arrived on the Belvedere, which had a nice view over the river and bridges and down to the wharf.  There is a connection now, but that is new and wasn’t there when I lived in Louisville.  Looking down toward the river are these bulkheads to protect the Belvedere and I-64 supports from runaway barges.  These where planted with some sort of hardy shrub or ground cover (honeysuckle?) so they wouldn’t look so stark. Lots of people call them the “giant planters”,but that’s not their purpose.

 

The Clark statue was originally located in the green space area, but was relocated when they remodeled the place.

 

Heres’ a quick diagram or plan of how I remember this place (but I didn’t show the paths in the green space area). 

 

 

And a section diagram on how the design had to overcome the floodwall and rise over the interstate (and a railroad, too, at that time).  I think it was a pretty clever solution to a tough site.

 

 

And some pix.  The one on the right is the original concept, while on the left are what its like today (apparently they still use it for festivals).

 

 

The vacant area to the south of the green space was supposed to be apartments or offices and such…there where different plans…but they ended up putting that awful Kentucky Center for the Arts concert hall there, which killed the space. 

 

I think the Riverfront Plaza and Belvedere have been superseded by the big new Riverfront Park running to the east of the wharf. 

 

I guess we  can expect some Louisville pix from you soon, now that you have arrived across the river!  ;-)

 

^Thanks for the wealth of info once again.

 

Yes, the Louisville pics are next.

Jeffersonville has a generally clean, quiet and plesant downtown. It is slowly transforming for the better with restaurants and such along the riverfront; but nothing like NKY.

 

The developments patterns are so completely different, there is no comparison.