Louisville Magazine is Louisville's city magazine, covering Louisville people, lifestyles, politics, sports, restaurants, entertainment and homes. Includes a monthly calendar of events.
Issue link: https://loumag.epubxp.com/i/197412
bit the Question BUILDING for a kid BLOODLINE What's your favorite class this year, and what's the best lesson you've learned in that class? "Drama. I know how to keep myself safe in drama. Like, I can't run. Because there's a carpet in there and I might get carpet burn." — Olivia, local second-grader You know how you drive the same route to work every . . . single . . . day . . . and so the scenery stops being scenery and turns into the visual equivalent of white noise? Like the forgettable oil-on-canvas prints you see-but-don'treally-see in the waiting room of a doctor's offce? Then one day — blammo! — you notice something different. A sign of life. Like, say, a new sign painted on the side of an old building, which seems to be happening more and more. Exhibit A: the playful "under construction" sign on the side of a building at Jefferson and Clay streets. Or the cheerful text painted on the side of the Falls City Lofts building, once home to the original Bacon's department store, on East Market Street. Or the murals in New Albany, Ind. The idea is nothing new. Most good ideas aren't. You may recall the photo essay we did on ghost signs in town (August 2011), some of which dated back nearly a century. Yea, it's a little showy. But it sure beats a billboard — or a nothing-much wall of bricks. Paint on, people. Advertising can be art, too. WELOVE Louisville Fire Department Headquarters 1135 W. Jefferson St. A project of the WPA, the 63-year-old fre department headquarters is a striking example of the Art Deco style and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. 1936 Construction begins on the new headquarters for the Louisville Fire Department. Te building is funded by the Works Progress Administration (later renamed the Works Projects Administration), an agency born of President Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal to provide public-service work for Americans during the Great Depression. 1937 Te building is completed in June as one of the city's few examples of Art Deco style, evident by its limestone edifce, vertical lines and geometric shapes. (Note the carvings above the doors and at the top of the structure.) Te architect, Brinton Beauregard Davis,* a native of Natchez, Miss. (but of course, Beauregard!), moved to Louisville at the turn of the century after studying in New York and Chicago. It was in the Windy City where Davis learned from World's Fair architect Charles B. Atwood. In the same year, Davis fnishes designing the vast majority of buildings on the campus of what is now Western Kentucky University in Bowling Green. It culminates a 28-year client relationship Davis held with the college and its visionary president, Henry Hardin Cherry. Davis designed 11 major buildings on campus, including the oversized Classical Revival administration building, a swimming pool, a stadium and the president's home. 1981 Te fre department headquarters joins 17 other fre stations in Louisville added to the National Register because of their history and architecture. * Davis, who lived in Louisville from 1902 until his death in 1952, is responsible for designing more than a dozen buildings listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Sadly, with a few exceptions like the fre department headquarters, the Kentucky Home Life Building on Fifth and Jeferson, the Kentucky Hotel (now Kentucky Towers) at Fifth and Muhammad Ali Boulevard, and what is now the Louisville Gardens (formerly the Jeferson County Armory), most of the buildings he designed in Louisville have been razed. Among Davis' lost legacies is the Hotel Henry Watterson, which sat on Walnut Street (now Muhammad Ali) between Fourth and Fifth streets. Named after the Courier-Journal 's most famous editor, the lavish, mahogany-rich Watterson (1912'81) went 10 stories high and included 250 rooms. It closed in 1974 and was demolished in 1981. — Kane Webb 18 LOUISVILLE MAGAZINE 11.13