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/421959
LOUISVILLE MAGAZINE 12.14 33 t isn't difcult to imagine the sounds and smells of Louisville's Main Street in the mid-1800s, just before the Civil War. Clip-clopping horses' hooves, creaking wagon wheels, shouting coachmen and cart drivers. A litter of pigs would snort and squeal east toward the packinghouses of Butchertown. Clanking iron chains heralded the arrival of the whip-crack- ing slave driver, forcing men, women and children into pens on Main at Second Street, just across the road from what today we call Whiskey Row. After the Civil War, the 100 block of West Main Street enjoyed the boom that made Louisville a big, rich city — the second most populous in the south (after New Orleans). During this period, Whiskey Row became the ofcial home of the biggest railroad in the region (later known as the Louisville & Nashville), distilleries, and Belknap, which was the world's largest hardware company. Later, though, commerce gravitated south to Broadway, and by the 1960s, most bankers and developers disparaged the central part of Main Street, from Preston Street to 12th. With modern architecture pushing its brash way from the canyons of Manhattan to the streets of San Francisco, many considered the Victorian charm of Louisville's Main Street to be as outdated as the buggy whips, plows and PART V For more than two years, Louisville Magazine has been documenting the transformation of a historic (and long- neglected) stretch of West Main Street, between First and Second streets, in a series of exclusive photo essays: barely standing buildings (August 2012), stabilization and demolition (December 2012), the construction crew (February 2013) and salvaged materials (August 2013). This month, the block's history and the investors who want to preserve it. By Keith Runyon Photo by Ted Tarquinio I Left to right: Investors Steve Wilson, Laura Lee Brown, the Rev. Al Shands, Jim Welch, Marianne Welch, Nina Bonnie, Edith Bingham, Henry Heuser Jr., Christy Brown and Mark Stegeman. Not pictured: Stephen Campbell.