Louisville Magazine is Louisville's city magazine, covering Louisville people, lifestyles, politics, sports, restaurants, entertainment and homes. Includes a monthly calendar of events.
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5 Churchill Downs Twin Spires Joseph Baldez, a draftsman in the D.X. Murphy architecture frm, designed a new 285-foot-high grandstand for Churchill Downs in 1894, topping his creation with a pair of graceful spires that ever since have been revered by sports fans around the world as symbols of the Kentucky Derby. 6 Palace Theatre lobby angel Louisville's grandest theater, designed by New York architect John Eberson in the Spanish Baroque style, opened as Loew's State Theater in 1928, with a lobby ceiling composed of the heads of 130 historical fgures and a theater ceiling made to resemble a starlit night sky. After being chopped up in the 1960s, it was restored in 1980 as the Palace. 7 Courier-Journal lobby globe When the Courier's new Art Moderne building opened on Broadway in 1948, its lobby featured, and still features, this oddity: a motorized, upside-down Earth clock with an equatorial belt of glass zodiac panels. Once lit by a lightbulb sun, recessed in a facing wall, that lasted precisely 28 days before the bulb had to be changed, the globe's now-broken motor went the route of the Derby Clock's and was forever on the fritz. 8 Colgate Clock The Colgate Clock faces downtown Louisville, looking across the Ohio River from atop the old Colgate-Palmolive plant in Clarksville, Ind. Built by the Seth Thomas Co., the huge timepiece has a 40-foot diameter — and keeps darned good time! 9 Old Forester water tower George Garvin Brown hit upon the idea of bottling top-grade bourbon, sealing the bottles at the distillery, and attaching a label with his signature, personally guaranteeing the contents to be of the highest quality. Brown's distillery fowered into the international spirits giant Brown-Forman, headquartered in Louisville. The fagship Old Forester brand is still made, aged, bottled, sealed and labeled right there under the water tower on Dixie Highway. 10 Belle of Louisville The Belle was launched as the excursion steamer Idlewild at Pittsburgh in 1914 and frst served duty as a Mississippi River ferry at Memphis. It made Louisville its home port from 1934 to 1947, when it was re-named the Avalon and returned to "tramping." Fifteen years later it found its way back to Louisville when Jefferson County Judge/Executive Marlow Cook won the bidding on the boat at auction, re-christening it the Belle of Louisville in 1963. 6.13 LOUISVILLE MAGAZINE 37