Louisville Magazine

FEB 2014

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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bit the Photos by Aaron Kingsbury The bridge approach on Poplar Hill Court (top) and the downtown view from the bridge. And now, your 2014 THIS MONTH IN Derby Princesses! PRESS RELEASES The National Merit and other junk Scholarship Corp. thinks highly of these Floyd Central High School students. "Great News — Your Sample Pack Of Cigs Has Been Reserved." The bell in the 122-foot-tall tower at St. James Church, on Bardstown Road near Eastern Parkway, recently celebrated its 100th birthday. Ding! Dong! Ding! Dong! The Spread Buffet has opened at Horseshoe Casino and the button on our jeans just broke. There's a cellphone app for this month's National Farm Machinery Show. Like Tinder for farmers? Oh, gotcha, it's like exhibitor listings and seminar schedules and stuff. The law frm Wyatt, Tarrant & Combs has announced these new partners! The Slugger Museum's 2013 atten- cross dance was 303,037, the most in its history. The Comedy Caravan is becoming the Laughing Derby. ROADS She's done it! She has passed the exam to become a registered professional engineer in Kentucky! The Blue Angels will be in the sky during Thunder Over Louisville festivities. Poplar Hill Court Bridge in Indian Hills O ne of the great curiosities in local expressway driving is the tiny bridge connecting two canyon walls of limestone high above I-71 just west of the Watterson split. It looks no bigger than a walkway from 60 feet below. Accessible from Blankenbaker Lane by taking Poplar Hill Road and then Poplar Hill Court, the barely two-lane-wide concrete bridge was built by the state in 1966 because dynamiting to create I-71 would have stranded the owners of a single property north of the highway — a huge Neo-Colonial Revival stone villa now on the National Register of Historic Places — with no way down to a main road. Amazingly, only a cheap metal gate and the adjacent neighbor's permission to use the driveway across the property blocked access the opposite way, to Longview Lane and thus River Road. More amazing, the neighboring Georgian Revival mansion was Linclif, built for William R. Belknap, the son of hardware magnate William B. Belknap, in 1912 (and now owned by novelist Sue Grafton), while the stranded villa — named Blankenbaker Station — was built for William R.'s daughter Christine and her husband in 1916. Tere was no lingering blood tie in 1966, however, and after reading the June 7, 1966, Courier-Journal story on the construction of the bridge, I got the distinct impression that the then-current homeowners weren't best buds. Noting that the tables had turned and she was now pro-gate, Blankenbaker Station's matron at the time said, "We have no intention of letting anyone else use the bridge." Or even check out the breathtaking view of downtown from it. Although the exclusivity has been diluted — three other bridge-going households have sprouted up near the villa in the past few decades, all with Poplar Hill Court addresses — the locked gate to Longview remains. After all, good gates make guarded neighbors. — Jack Welch 20 LOUISVILLE MAGAZINE 2.14 You can now buy Deschutes beers in town. The Oregon brewery sent us some samples in the mail. We'd tell you how they tasted, but the bottles exploded in the box due to frigid January temperatures. Qannik, a polar bear at the Louisville Zoo, is now three years old. She celebrated her birthday with a peanut butter cake from Heitzman bakery. Meet Joe Fraser, the new chairman of the Kentucky Distillers' Association. The press release quoted him as saying (and we're paraphrasing here): "Bourbon, bourbon, bourbon, bourbon, bourbon." No, the boxer spelled his name "Joe Frazier." If everything goes according to plan, by the time you read this local dentist David Shorten will have climbed Mt. Kilimanjaro, to raise diabetes awareness on behalf of his wife. "Due to the bad weather and driving conditions, our seminar scheduled for tonight has been cancelled." Or maybe not. Because there's no telling what the weather will be like when you read this. Probably really sunny. Go outside for a nice walk. HAIKU REVIEW By time you rrrread this, Herrrre's hoping we've forgotten Phrrrrase "polar vorrrrtex."

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