The last of the Louisville last houses posts.  Yay.  This time we look at last houses in Phoenix Hill at the edge of the urban renewal desolation east of downtown.

 

This time a bit more history.  Once again the 1873 map.  Note that eastward extension of the city marked by the orange line.  This was Preston’s Addition, the first extension beyond the original town plat (1827).  It sits on an old land grant or survey from colonial times (a bounty for service in the French & Indian War), outlined in the blue dashed lines, but wasn’t occupied until after the Revolution. 

 

 

Prestons’ Addition is the “historical” name for this part of Phoenix Hill, which isn’t on a hill at all. For some reason the name of Phoenix Hill Brewery, which was built on {and in to) a real hil, became associated with Preston’s Addition.  And that little triangular neighborhood around the former brewery site (almost nothing survives) is also called Phoenix Hill, adding to the confusion.

 

In any case, there is cartographic evidence from 1855 and 1856 maps that substantial parts of  Preston's Addition/Phoenix Hill were built-out before the Civil War.  This would have been some of the oldest urban fabric in the city.

 

But it was nearly all cleared via a mix of early public housing, urban renewal, medical center expansion, freeway construction, and later parking extensions of the medical center and the usual light industrial/commercial stuff 

 

 

…leaving the Market Street corridor and these few survivors at the edge of a parking lot zone surrounding the medical center. 

 

Numbers keyed to the pictures to come.  Beyond these houses is a rump neighborhood, all that survives.  Note St Martin of Tours shown at the lower right corner.  We saw bits of this neighborhood on that Phoenix Hill infill post, so you can get a feel of what was lost..

 

 

Phoenix Hill outriders....

 

 

This excellent little house tells the story, truly the last house, surrounded by parking, with medical tower in the background.

 

 

 

But note the long rear wing and wooden porch/gallery.  This is an interesting feature of houses in these older parts of Louisville.  Perhaps a cousin to the Over the Rhine veranda discussed by John Clubbe on pp 230-231 in Cincinnati Observed

 

 

 

Surviving houses seem to survive in pairs and groups, huddled together as the waves of parking lots wash around them.  These three are across the street.  Interesting scale things here, one smaller house, and the larger neighbor, with the two tall windows/one small window façade treatment.  The porch is a fairly recent addition, when people should have known better.    But the smaller neighbor is gem.

 

 

Could these have been antebellum?  Maybe the smaller one?  Hard to say.

 

Yet another last house, looking west toward the parking lot wasteland and medical center stuff.  Interestingly, and you can just barely notice it in the pix, is that this part of Phoenix Hill is on a slight rise on the floodplain. 

 

 

 

This house has one of those long rear annexes.  Tenement housing, or just more rooms?  But the façade is interesting in its own right, as one can see that big first floor front window that we saw in one or two houses in Smoketown.  The front entrance is elaborated via inset and the corner column.

 

 

 

Down the street, a funeral home.  The house has, yet again, the typical Italianate façade treatment that we’ve seen earlier, and in Smoketown and Limerick. 

 

 

And across the street from the funeral home, the one on the right looks to be older,  while the one on the left seems to be a later local version of a four-square squeezed on to the lot.

 

 

 

Madison Street Mall.  This is a gated pedestrian street, part of a housing development maybe from the 1980s.  This set of houses was retained, and they may be antebellum as this block is shown mostly build out in the two 1850s maps.  They look like lower versions of Cincy OTR houses, with the long, shallow gable roof

 

 

 

The rear of the houses have a mono-pitch roof L addition with side porches.  Detach the L and use it as its own house and you have one of those St. Louis-style flounder houses.

 

 

Two aerials showing how these houses fit into the housing development, and how the development really bites the big one by using the mono-pitch back of the original houses as the inspiration for primary façade treatment, resulting in something that attempts to be “modern”, yet “sensitive to  context”, but instead looks vaguely like a 1970s era suburban “ski chalet” condo complex.  Infill Version 1.0, still in beta, with bugs.

 

 

 

 

Finally, a view of an aerial from the city GIS site showing the lot lines over the parking lots,  dashed meaning “retired property lines”…(and maybe the diagonal lines of the original 1700’s land grant survey showing on the streets).

 

 

Taking away the aerial, the outlines of a ghost neighborhood emerges…

 

 

Lost Louisville

 

(I should probably post something more upbeat about Louisville in the future.  I guess since I love the place so much I can be the big critic, too).

 

wow. while i'm glad they are still there, the remaining few just add to the heartbreak.

 

however, what's worst of all is that 2nd to last aerial. the parking lots that replaced these tracts are empty. ugh!

 

anyway, please do post more l'ville neighborhoods, both good & bad. after you do your next photo tour visit i think you need to stop awhile and have yourself a hot brown. heck, have a makers too. you'll feel better about it!  :wink:

 

Excellent thread. I'm always impressed by the detail in your research.

anyway, please do post more l'ville neighborhoods, both good & bad.

 

It's possible to "visit" Louisville, or any other city, by using Google or MS LiveSearch.  You can fly over via aeriels and use the "street" pix in google and the birdseye in Live Search to focus in on places that look interesting. 

 

These features make these pix tours sort of pointless as anyone can take take a pix tour.

 

 

anyway, please do post more l'ville neighborhoods, both good & bad.

 

It's possible to "visit" Louisville, or any other city, by using Google or MS LiveSearch.  You can fly over via aeriels and use the "street" pix in google and the birdseye in Live Search to focus in on places that look interesting. 

 

These features make these pix tours sort of pointless as anyone can take take a pix tour.

 

 

 

Hush now. Your threads are the first ones I read.

Keep it up!

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