Pradip D. Patel
Anybody who’s seen HBO’s new period drama, The Gilded Age, is familiar with the lavish lifestyle enjoyed by America’s affluent New York industrialists in the late 1800s—a time of unprecedented economic growth and prosperity. Ostentatious Victorians, especially the nouveau riche, advertised their wealth by building the largest, most extravagant mansions they could afford, preferably something that would overshadow their old-money neighbors.
But Gilded Age splendor didn’t end at New York’s borders. It also left its refined mark on Louisville. Nowhere is that more evident than in the city’s 45-block historic preservation district known as Old Louisville. With more than 1,400 stone and brick structures, the area has one of the largest collections of late Victorian architecture in the country.
To see the highlights, join a 90-minute outdoor walking tour guided by David Dominé, the owner of Louisville Historic Tours and author of several books about the neighborhood. “Many still considered Louisville a rough-and-tumble river city during the Gilded Age,” Dominé said. “In any case, a Victorian class system emerged in Kentucky, and those at the top enjoyed unbridled extravagances. The society pages and local papers abounded with stories of extravagant parties and social events.”
Pradip D. Patel
On the tour, the Conrad-Caldwell House Museum never fails to elicit accolades from architecture enthusiasts. The stately three-story grand dame looms regally over her sister mansions on St. James Court, the city’s most prestigious address during the Gilded Age, a phrase coined by Mark Twain to describe the late 19th century. The opulent limestone house is known locally as Conrad’s Castle because an array of turrets and towers give it a medieval, fortress-like appearance. A moat would not be remiss. Unlike a drafty European castle, the seven-bedroom Conrad home was built in 1893 with all of the latest modern conveniences such as electricity and indoor plumbing.
This masterpiece of Richardsonian Romanesque architecture was designed to display the status of its French-born owner, Theophile Conrad, who made his fortune in the leather tanning industry.
Most of Old Louisville’s elegant homes are privately owned and rarely open for tours, so the Conrad-Caldwell House Museum offers a rare opportunity to see the interior of one. Many people return after the walking tour to admire the intricately carved staircase and glowing stained-glass windows. For more information on the museum, visit conrad-caldwell.org.
As Dominé leads the tour to the next stop past rows of scarlet azaleas, he provides a little background on Old Louisville’s origins. During the Southern Exposition—a series of World’s Fair-like events held in Louisville from 1883-87—everything in what is now Old Louisville was brand new. The area was a bustling hub of innovation and technology that attracted visitors from around the globe.
At night, the grand spectacle was illuminated by thousands of incandescent lightbulbs, Thomas Edison’s new invention that wowed the crowds. The Southern Exposition lights explain why Old Louisville was one of the first electrically lighted neighborhoods in the nation. Paradoxically, part of the area’s charm today comes from flickering gas lamps.
The sprawling exposition hall that stood in St. James Court is long gone, but what remains are the grand houses of the bourbon barons, tobacco titans and racetrack royalty who once resided there.
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Victorian homes in some cities often look alike, but Old Louisville has a diversity of architectural styles—Italianate, Victorian Gothic, Georgian Revival, Beaux-Arts and more. Because Victorians loved fancy architectural embellishments, you could take the tour a dozen times and see a new detail—a gargoyle or a fleur de lis relief panel—every time.
“What makes the neighborhood unique is that every house is different than the one next door,” Dominé said. “There are no cookie-cutter houses.”
In the mid-20th century, the area went through a period of decline. Many homes were boarded up or divided into apartments. Some were lost to the ruthless wrecking ball of urban renewal in the 1960s. When Old Louisville became a historic preservation district in the 1970s, revitalization efforts began, and eventually the neighborhood was restored to its former glory.
Pradip D. Patel
Dominé points out the Pink Palace, a circa 1890 house that, except for its imposing size, resembles a child’s princess playhouse. It was never meant for children, though. Originally red brick, it was a gentlemen’s club and casino where elite businessmen could sip their favorite bourbon and woo lady luck at the card tables. When the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union, one of the driving forces behind Prohibition, moved its headquarters into the Chateau-style building in the 1920s, the group wiped away its sinful past with a coat of pink paint. It is now a private residence.
Many early residents of Old Louisville had interesting lives to go with their interesting houses.
For example, the widely lauded literary couple Cale Young Rice and Alice Hegan Rice lived in a 1910 Neo-Colonial Revival house where, according to Dominé, they entertained John Steinbeck and Ernest Hemingway long before they were Pulitzer Prize-winning novelists.
Alice was best known for her 1901 best seller Mrs. Wiggs of the Cabbage Patch, a social commentary based on her work in Louisville’s lower-income Cabbage Patch neighborhood that illuminated the divide between the haves and have-nots. The novel was made into several films, one starring Shirley Temple.
Madison Cawein, a poet known as the “Keats of Kentucky” lived in a two-story Greek Revival home from 1907-12. Graceful curves created by a half-moon, colonnaded entry and a rounded bay window make the house seem more inviting than some of its colossal neighbors.
Perhaps something about the area sparks writers’ creativity because another well-known author lives there now. Sena Jeter Naslund, the 2005-06 Kentucky poet laureate, is the author of the 1998 critically acclaimed best seller Ahab’s Wife: or, The Star-Gazer. Across from Naslund’s St. James Court home is a landmark of Old Louisville, an elegant fountain depicting Venus rising from the sea. Recast in the 1970s, the fountain served as inspiration for the setting of her 2013 novel The Fountain of St. James Court: or, Portrait of the Artist as an Old Woman.
Some of the most stunning houses are on Third Street, known as Millionaire’s Row. Bourbon merchant Samuel Grabfelder built a stone Beaux-Arts mansion that’s a standout for what it lacks. There’s no steep, multi-faceted roof adorned with turrets and towers. The symmetrical house has a flat roof, and its grandeur comes largely from its size and an array of sculpted wreaths and garlands in the spaces between the third-story windows.
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Dominé leads the group through Central Park, a 17-acre green space that heralds the arrival of spring with blooming dogwoods and redbuds. Designed by pioneering landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted, who also designed Central Park in New York, the park was formerly called DuPont Square because it was part of the DuPont family’s country estate (see related story on Olmsted beginning on page 18). In the 1870s, the family opened the grounds to the public, providing not only a bucolic oasis from the noise and grime of the city but also entertainment, including concerts and fireworks.
The scene in the late 19th century may have resembled “A Sunday Afternoon on La Grande Jatte” (1884-1886), George Seurat’s famous painting that depicts bustled ladies with parasols and gentlemen in top hats relaxing in a suburban park near Paris. Today, the park is best known as the home of the long-running Kentucky Shakespeare Festival.
For a more private outdoor space, Floral Terrace is a “hidden” pedestrian courtyard off Sixth Avenue that has all the charm of a secret garden. Oblivious passersby stroll right past the iron gate, perhaps believing it to be private property. Those in the know follow a well-trodden brick walkway shaded by fragrant magnolias to a bench by the fountain. It’s the ideal spot to admire the cottage-like houses that flank the courtyard and small front yards carpeted with periwinkle. These Victorian homes don’t have the size and grandeur as some of the others, but they still have points of interest.
Dominé said that he never tires of introducing visitors to the neighborhood he loves. “It’s not just a treasure for Louisville and Kentucky. It’s a national treasure,” he said.
A Dark Room in Glitter Ball City
At 1435 South Fourth Street stands an old red brick house that David Dominé almost bought years ago but is oh-so-glad he didn’t. There have long been stories of haunted houses in Old Louisville (Dominé also guides a haunted tour in the neighborhood), but the “murder house” has a dark story that’s far more frightening than the ghosts of sobbing ladies and ragged children.
In a nutshell, the body of drag queen and drug dealer Jamie Carroll was found buried in the dirt-floor basement of the house in 2010, and the two men who lived there, Joseph Banis and Jeffrey Mundt, were accused of Carroll’s murder.
The sordid tale so intrigued Dominé that he wrote a true-crime mystery about it, A Dark Room in Glitter Ball City. (The title references Louisville as home to a large manufacturer of disco balls.) Dominé follows the trials of Banis and Mundt while offering an unexpectedly humorous glimpse of Old Louisville’s most colorful characters.