Louisville Magazine

NOV 2012

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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everything," Crutcher writes. "Previously, there had been two choices: Stevedores could off- load cargoes from upstream paddle wheelers and keelboats in Louisville, cart them a few miles west, and reload them onto downriver vessels; or experienced pilots could attempt to navigate through the chutes, water conditions permitting." Keats' first business was partnership in a sawmill near First and Washington streets, followed by a gristmill, a timber enterprise and forays into real estate. Te fast-rising population, created by labor needs of the newly important river port, meant a need for more houses, accentuated by a disastrous flood in 1832 that swept away many homes and businesses, necessitating their replacement. Keats made around 114 property investments over the years, and perhaps as important, progressed up the civic ladder. Starting with his appointment as water warden to the Preservation Engine Fire Company in 1824, he began stacking up honors: member of the Philosophical Society (1825), appointment to the Ohio River Bridge Commission (1825), city charter trustee (1828), Merchants Insurance incorporator (1830), Louisville Lyceum curator (1831), Louisville Historical Society treasurer and trustee (1832), Bank of Kentucky board member (1832) and Louisville Charitable Society president (1836). He built a splendiferous townhouse, nicknamed "the Englishman's Palace," on what we now call Muhammad Ali Boulevard between Tird and Fourth streets — part of a property parcel owned by Bank of Kentucky president John Jeremiah Jacob, a newfound friend and the largest real estate holder in the city. Te mansion, sold by the courts after Keats' debt-ridden death, was demolished in 1924 to make an annex for Stewart's department store, later to become the Hilliard Lyons offices. One of Keats' enduring roles was as a trustee of Louisville College, which was a precursor to the University of Louisville. One of greatest pleasures of Crutcher's book is its wealth of illustration, including a photo of the house that George built. "I intend to continue my present timber business until I have built homes enough to yield an annual rent sufficient to support my family in a liberal manner," Keats had written to his sister Fanny in 1832. "[One day] I shall retire from my present engrossing occupation, and visit the country of my youth. Upon my real estate rests my credit, which has hitherto enabled me to extend my business to any extent. . . ." Keats assembled a development tract between Sixth and Seventh streets on the south side of Main Street by completing 13 separate transactions. Te majority of them were in the name of (Daniel) Smith and Keats, the entity that went on to invest $10,000 cash in the [44] LOUISVILLE MAGAZINE 11.12 Louisville Hotel, an investment that equaled 10 to 12 percent of the company's capital. Construction of the hotel began in 1832, and local architect Hugh Roland modeled the structure, with a colonnaded limestone front, after Boston's Tremont Hotel. With rising prosperity and social status came other friendships besides Jacob with many of the prime movers in Louisville's rise, men like If Keats were to return today to the city he helped build (Clifton's Keats Avenue is named for him), he would recognize only one building. In Crutcher's book is a depiction of the facade of the Bank of Louisville, built in 1837 and the only extant structure from Keats' time. Alas, already stinging from the disastrous Living "in a liberal manner": the Keats man- sion on (then) Walnut Street between Third and Fourth, where Hilliard Lyons' offices are today. Here the Keatses hosted parties for some of the city's wealthiest citizens. James Guthrie, who rose from the flatboat trade to become first an attorney, then a state legislator, City Council Finance Committee chairman, director of the canal company, U of L board president, U.S. secretary of the treasury, L&N; Railroad president and U.S. senator, as well as Judge John Rowan, Guthrie's mentor, who once killed a man in a duel before going on to become a Kentucky and U.S. legislator, Kentucky Court of Appeals justice and U.S. senator. Another close friend was George Prentice, Whig editor of the Louisville Journal. Wilde About Louisville Oscar Wilde, poet and self-styled aesthete, visited Louisville in 1882 and leaves this interesting anecdote dating from 40 years after George Keats' death: "During my tour in America [1882] I happened one evening to find myself in Louisville, Kentucky. Te subject I had selected to speak on was the Mission of Art in the Nineteenth Century, and in the course of my lecture I had occasion to quote Keats' 'Sonnet on Blue' as an example of the poet's delicate sense of colour-harmonies. When my lecture was concluded, there came round to see me a lady of middle age, with a sweet gentle manner and a most musical voice. She introduced herself to me as Mrs. (Emma Frances) Speed, the daughter of George Keats, and invited me to come and examine the Keats manuscripts in her possession. I spent most of the next day with her, reading the letters of (John) Keats to her father, some of which were at that time unpublished, poring over torn yellow leaves and faded scraps of paper. . . . Some months afterwards, when I was in California, I received a letter from Mrs. Speed asking my acceptance of the original manuscript of the sonnet which I had quoted in my lecture." Panic of 1837, which had ruined many a wealthy person, Keats was persuaded to help out a couple of longtime business associates by putting all of his financial eggs into backing a scheme for a new state-of-the-art steamboat, only to have the part-built craft become a victim of the post- panic recession, resulting in Keats' entire fortune, including the house, being called in by creditors. It is deeply ironic that he lost his first (small) fortune over a boat deal with Audubon and his last (large) fortune over another boat deal in which Keats sank, literally and metaphorically, a sum of $125,000 that was close to his total net worth. He died broke on Christmas Eve 1841 from what was possibly the family curse, consumption, though two doctors consulted by Crutcher doubt the diagnosis since the time between onset of symptoms and death was only two weeks, short for tuberculosis. One estimate says 625 direct descendants of George and Georgiana walk the streets of Louisville and elsewhere, and there is even a stream of Spanish Keatses, as one daughter married a diplomat. Crutcher penned another book, Te Keats Family, which is a practical directory of descendants (Butler Books, 2009). George Keats and his family have a neighbor in Cave Hill Cemetery — section 0 lot 73; the staff at Cave Hill will point the way. A shining new granite headstone close by attests to the farsightedness of Lawrence Crutcher. It is his. His late wife is buried nearby and space has been allocated for his current wife. Te tireless chronicler of the Louisville Keats family will spend eternity, as he has spent much of his life on earth, among his literary ancestors.

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