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/62230
Oxmoor Farm, 720 Oxmoor Ave. "Eighteenth-century brick buildings are extraordinarily rare in Jefferson County. Tere are some log houses that date back that far, but it's rare to have any building from the 1790s in Louisville. Tis one is framed; 1790s and it's milled wood. Built by Alexander Scott Bullitt, it looks like they beamed it up from Virginia and beamed it down here. It's one of the best examples of Colonial frame architecture you'll find anywhere, as far as I'm concerned. Later, in the 1820s, Bullitt's son William built a one-story brick addition on the front, and then in the 1920s William Marshall Bullitt built it up to a two- story house and added a wing on each side. And Oxmoor has one of the finest collections of original historic outbuildings in the state — about a dozen of them, including slave quarters, overseer's house, icehouse, springhouse, smokehouse and kitchen, and barns. Te Kentucky Heritage Council holds a preservation easement on 80 acres of this farm, so it will be preserved in perpetuity." Conrad-Caldwell House, 1402 St. James Court "As far as I'm concerned, the queen bee of the entire Old Louisville Preservation District is the Conrad-Caldwell House (designed by Arthur Loomis and built around 1893). You know, the whole period was known for its excess — Richard Morris Hunt was designing the Biltmore Estate around this time — and boy, is this a great example of it. My goodness, look at this thing; I mean, there's hardly any surface that's not embellished with some sort of decorative detailing. You've got masks, you've got fleurs-de-lis, you've got lion heads, you've got fish — every imaginable creature incorporated into this highly elaborate, intricate Richardsonian Romanesque façade. Loomis is trying to bring the entryway down to a human scale, but he wants to use these big Richardsonian arches, so rather than try to work those arches into the second story, he's got to have squat columns to make it work. But they're going to welcome you first, so he's bringing them down to a very human scale. Knowing that their capitals are right at face level as you walk in, he's designed them with elaborate carvings. Even the bases have all kinds of detail. He's figured out how to articulate everything." 5.12 LOUISVILLE MAGAZINE [65]