Continuing the circuit around downtown Louisville to look at close-in surviving houses that are (mostly) not shotguns in neighborhoods that lost a lot of houses and old things.

 

The map of urban growth to 1873, corrected a bit to show Portland as an older area (platted in the early year of the 19th century).  This area, and the plats of grid shifts extending along the canal towards Louisville (the “Marine District”)  have one of the cities larger concentration of 19th century housing

 

 

But we will be looking at houses in Smoketown, the neighborhood southeast of downtown.

 

 

The houses or groups of houses circled and keyed.  Broadway, the dividing line for downtown, is shown as is I-65, which is also a division line of sorts.

 

 

…in this case, as one can tell by the aerial, the neighborhood was not so much destroyed by parking but by low density light industrial uses, demolition,  and public housing.

 

Smoketown is actually historic as “it is Louisville’s only surviving neighborhood that reflects the continuous presence of African Americans from before the Civil War”. 

 

The neighborhood either got its name from smoke coming from the brick kilns in the area or from a possible (and forgotten) local racial epithet of calling blacks “smokies”.  The oldest reference to brick making was in 1823 when this was farms, as well as to the possibility of hiring “Negro men well skilled in the brick making business”.  It’s not clear if these were freedmen or slaves, since urban slaves did hire themselves out.  By 1870 there were 9 brickyards in the neighborhood.

 

What is known is that the area became a settlement of freed blacks after the Civil War, which was a typical pattern in southern cities.  Most acquired peripheral black settlements (Lexington is an excellent example of that) as ex-slaves left the plantations & farms and moved either to their own rural settlements or to town.

 

This map is from 1876, little over ten years after the war, showing brick and frame buildings.  One can see little  ponds that might have been clay pits, an early horse car line on Preston Street (from the late 1860s), and a small black business district:  “a tiny enclave of black-owned businesses on Preston Street near College, where two blacksmiths and a wagon maker’s shop were located.

 

 

One notes that Preston acted as sort of dividing line.  To the east were dense concentrations of frame shotgun houses (mostly replaced by the Sheppard Square housing project).  This might have been the original black section.  To the west was brick houses, maybe more of a bourgeois area, which would eventually extend south and west into today’s Old Louisville.

 

(Source for the map is the UofL Kentucky Map collection:

reference)

 

Starting in the western section and moving east, one block south of downtown, some very close-in oldies.  These two, which are either being restored or about to be demolished.

 

(high rise  in the background was the former Stouffers)

 

And a block south these two.  This one dates from 1876 or earlier, converted into offices (note funky one-story addition to the right).  The design of the front door is nice, with the alcove:

 

 

And this next multi-family unit is later, after 1883.  Another example of side-entrances,  And I wonder if those bay windows are original as they sort of overlap the decorative lintels.  Note also the chamfering of the house as it bulges out in the middle.  One will see this feature in a few other older houses and later brought to the front of the house as a primary façade feature in later 19th & early 20th century designs in Old Louisville. 

 

(in the background one can see some of the low density stuff that is in the vicinity)

 

Moving east of I-65, one moves into the heart of the little neighborhood of brick houses shown on the 1876 city atlas.  This one, however, is later, actually from the later 1880s or even more recent.  Yet the large front window one the first floor can be seen in other old houses in Louisville.  This is the first house south of Broadway on Floyd, the rest being demolished & replaced by vacant lots or low density commercial use that you see in the background:

 

 

One block south of Broadway and a half-block west of Preston is this group of three.  One, the blue Blum Glass building has been heavily modified.  The board-up is  perhaps an early example of the local freestyle neo-romanesque style that became popular in the Old Louisville neighborhood.

 

 

..and it’s neighbor is  fascinating transitional example of a mix of the Italianate (upper floors) and neo-romanesque (ground floor with the big rusticated arches). 

 

 

…and, as we saw in the house on Floyd, the large ground floor front window.  And the chamfered corner where the house bulges (to the right behind the tree)

 

Exactly one block south this pair.  Another great example of a multifamily building (recently restored), this one apparently has four units (counting the gas meters in front), while next door another Italianate town house.  Note how the one to the left mimics the one to the right with the “2 tall windows & 1 small window + fancy front door” façade treatment. 

 

 

Crossing Preston Street into Smoketown proper, these are from google, but it would be worth exploring this neighborhood more, for the early shotgun houses.  I wasn’t paying much attention to shotguns when I was there in person as I was specifically looking for non-shotgun houses.

 

The first older buildings on Preston south of Broadway, all from before 1876.  What we have here  is, left to right, a heavily modified brick shotgun, a retail building, and, in the background, a frame shotgun (looking more like the Dayton version, interestingly enough) in the background.  The retail building might have been part of the black business cluster mentioned above, and it seems to be a commercial version of the Italianate style.

 

 

The Sheppard Square housing project starts just behind these houses, replacing the mass of shotgun houses visible on the 1876 map above.  This would have been one of the early close-in concentrations of this house form.

 

A lot of these were self-built by the first black settlers in the neighborhood, on land usually (but not always) owned by whites.  The Encyclopedia of Louisville says:

 

“…a group of African Americans built simple shotgun houses on land leased from whites.  They later lost ownership when the panic of 1873 wiped out their savings and they were unable to pay their rent”

(sounds a bit like our modern housing problems).

 

The encyclopedia also says that there was a black man, Washington Spradling Jr, who owned large amounts of real estate in the area.  The neighborhood also had the “Eastern Colored School” (early Jim Crow education) in 1874).

 

Anywho, since I was looking for non-shotgun houses, this one on Finzer between Sheppard Square and Broadway, as a working class version of the italianate town houses.  Note the porch, with is a later addition.  It’s built of rusticated whitewashed stone, and is a very common feature in turn of the century blue collar neighborhoods of Louisville.  In this case the feature as added to an older house. 

 

 

…and you can see some old shotgun houses in the background (well, maybe one is a shotgun).

 

Truth be told this neighborhood (and Shelby Park to the south) was sort of a no-mans-land.  I barley knew it existed and my only venture into it was to go to factory here to have my radiator cleaned (they made this cleaning equipment, but also did the work as a sideline, very obscure).  In fact the neighborhood was such a blank spot in the psychological geography of the city it was the location of a small gay bath house in the 1970s.

 

In recent years the place is receiving more attention.  There is now a “Smoketown USA” BBQ/rib place trading on a pun on the name though it is really closer to Germantown.

 

(on edit, for the history tidbits in this post: source

 

Next, we finish up with Phoenix Hill.

 

Great read. Thanks Jeffrey.

Quality housing stock. Hard to believe so much was torn down.

Thanks!