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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LOUISVILLE MAGAZINE 5.16 47 GERMANTOWN "Te dirt's great here," Germantown resident Nora Christensen says one morning in early April. "All of these houses are built on black, delicious dirt." In 2004, Christensen and her daughter, Stella, moved into the 1,000-square-foot shotgun cottage on Ellison Avenue, with a sliver of a backyard for growing vegetables and composting. Christensen, who followed her sister to Louisville in the '90s, is founder of the Squallis Puppeteers, which is one reason she keeps a sewing machine on a table in her bedroom. "It made me love the city even more — that you could frst of all earn a living as a puppeteer and then buy a house," the 40-year-old says. A forgivable loan for single mothers helped her put a down payment on the house that she says was "dirt cheap" — $70,000 12 years ago. Tis was before the Nachbar opened a block away in 2007, replacing a motorcycle bar called Charlie's Tavern. "It was pretty rough," Christensen says of Charlie's. "In the frst few months someone was stabbed outside. It was terrifying because it was the frst time I was living by myself with my daughter. I always lived on the second foor in all my apartments and here I was on the frst foor. But I had my dog and my daughter and the three of us were fne. Dogs are essential in Germantown. I tell everyone that." In 2008 Christensen met Shawn Hennessey; they got married at the house. A couple years later she had a son, Oscar, so Hennessey reconfgured the home's layout by adding a third bedroom. Tey've made cosmetic changes here and there, stripping away lowered ceilings and wood paneling, but Christensen says she has preserved some of the history of the home, which was built circa 1904. "I believe I was the second owner," she says. "Te woman who was born here, her parents had owned it and then she inherited it and then passed away. Tere are all these little systems in the house, like the fy swatter goes here and this is where you hang this, so I kept all the things that worked." Te dirt that accommodates Christensen's asparagus patch welcomed German immigrants in the late 1800s. Tey kept farms along Beargrass Creek, which often fooded the area and led to the nickname "Frogtown," until the city rerouted the creek in the 1920s. Germantown — the section northeast of Goss Avenue between Eastern Parkway, Beargrass Creek, Barret Avenue, Breckinridge Street and the CSX railroad tracks — developed as a Louisville suburb. Now it's just about the only place in town where you can actually get anywhere else in 10 minutes. Historian Don Haag was born on Ash Street and grew up on Lydia Street in Schnitzelburg (bounded by Goss Avenue and Poplar Level Road to the east, Clarks Lane to the south, Shelby Street to the west, and the railroad to the north). Haag's great-grandparents settled on Goss in 1887. At that time, Haag says, Schnitzelburg was mostly dairy farms. In 1889, the Louisville Cotton Mills plant was built on Goss near the tracks. At 250,000 square feet, the plant was one of the largest of its kind in the country. Tis is where, according to the book Louisville's Germantown and Schnitzelburg, cotton Opposite page: Nora and Stella Christensen, Oscar and Shawn Hennessey at their home on Ellison Avenue. By Mary Chellis Austin / Photos by Chris Witzke As the in-demand neighborhood gains high- income homeowners and businesses, will longtime residents be able to aford the change? NEW LIFE (AND OLD) IN