HistoricLouisville.com | Louisville's Historic Architecture

Experience

Louisville’s Historic Architecture

A collection of Louisville’s architectural and cultural heritage treasures, to inform and educate anyone wanting to appreciate our surviving built history.

FEATURES

Attractions

Visit these locations to interact with Louisville’s historic architecture.

Architecture

Learn about Louisville’s historic architectural styles and terminology.

ATTRACTIONS

Main Street

West Main Street offers a walking tour opportunity featuring some of the best of Louisville’s architectural heritage. Starting at 1st and...
Farmington

Farmington is a 19th century home and former hemp plantation, completed in 1816 on 18 acres, was originally owned by John and Lucy Speed. Th...
Portland Museum

The on-going restoration of Beech Grove, an 1852 Italianate antebellum residence and gardens, once a 'country seat' on the old road between ...
Coalhole Covers

Louisville was a major 19th century iron manufacturing center, with over 12 foundries operating by 1880. Cast iron from Louisville's foundri...
Seagrams Distillery

The most impressive of Louisville's post-Prohibition distilleries was constructed between 1933 and 1936, and operated as the Kessler Distill...
Hayfield

Hayfield, 1809 Tyler Lane, is located between Bardstown Rd. and Newburg Rd. near the Watterson Expressway. The front section of Hayfield ...
Culbertson Mansion

One of Indiana's leading citizens & philanthropists built this Second Empire mansion at 916 E. Main St. in New Albany, Indiana in 1869. The ...
Whitehall

This garden estate, circa 1855, began as a modest two-story Italianate house, a style popularized in Louisville during the mid-19th century....
Howard Steamboat Museum

In 1834, 19-year-old James Howard started his shipyard on the Ohio River in Jeffersonville, IN, and began building his first boats. During i...
Water Tower & Pumping Station

First planned in the 1860s, the Water Tower is the oldest and most ornamental structure of its kind in the country.
Hogan's Fountain Pavilion

The Hogan's Fountain Pavilion is a large gazebo and picnic shelter of mid-century modern architecture, built in 1965, it is the most promine...
Churchill Downs

A 147-acre farm that Meriwether Lewis Clark Jr. purchased for the Louisville Jockey Club and Driving Park Assoc. from the Churchill family t...
Filson Historical Society

The finest example of Parisian Beaux Arts architecture in Louisville, now the home of Kentucky’s oldest privately supported historical socie...
Stitzel-Weller Distillery

Bourbon aging warehouses built in Louisville prior to Prohibition (1920-33) had taken on the form of solid masonry construction, with interi...
Stitzel Brothers Distillery

Remnants of early distilleries are hard to find in Louisville. The few that remain provide a glimpse into the evolution of the industry. In ...
Selma Hall

Built in 1837 by a prominent citizen and merchant, Selema Hall is a restored plantation home with details befitting its antebellum roots. Co...
The Point - Heigold / Paget Houses

From Louisville's founding, this area was known as The Point for its position on the point bar of Beargrass Creek's juncture with the Ohio R...
Big Four Bridge

The Big Four Bridge is a six-span former railroad truss bridge crossing the Ohio River from Louisville to Jeffersonville, Indiana. It was co...
Audubon Park

The area evolved from 1000 acres granted to Colonel William Preston in 1773 by King George III as payment for services rendered during the F...
The Comfy Cow

Though this building is not on Louisville's Landmarks list it has its own preservation success story. Genny’s Diner began next door as an ei...
Downtown

Louisville is the largest city in the Commonwealth of Kentucky and the 28th-most-populous city in the U.S. It is the regional economic hub a...
2909 Field Ave.

The history of Crescent Hill can be traced back to the original pioneer road of the 1780s. Upgraded as the Louisville-Lexington Turnpike in ...
George Rogers Clark Homesite

Located at the lower end of a natural 24-foot exposed limestone drop along the 2-mile long stretch of the Falls of The Ohio, it was original...
Complete Local Landmarks List

A complete list of Metro Louisville Individual Landmarks. Many of these are also National Historic Landmarks.
Blackacre

Rural land has all but disappeared in Jefferson County, and with it, our only ties to the history of Kentucky’s earliest settlements. The...
Bellevoir

This two-and-a-half story brick Italianate-style mansion was built in 1867 by Hamilton Ormsby on his estate overlooking the railroad tracks ...
Thomas Edison House

Just after the Civil War, a 19-year old Thomas Edison is thought to have rented a room in this building during part of the 1 1/2 years he wo...
Twig & Leaf

Established in 1962, "Twig and Leaf" is a diner and local landmark located in the Douglass Loop area of the Highlands. In 2011, it was desig...
Zachary Taylor House

Springfield was the boyhood home of the twelfth President of the United States, Zachary Taylor who lived there from 1790 to 1808, held his m...
Conrad-Caldwell House Museum

Finest example of Richardsonian Romanesque architecture in Louisville, built in 1893 on St. James Court in the in Old Louisville neighborho...
U.S. Marine Hospital

In 1837, Congress authorized the construction of the U.S. Marine Hospital in Louisville “for the benefit of sick seamen, boatmen, and other ...
Union Station

A railroad station that opened in 1891 by the Louisville and Nashville Railroad, has served as offices for the Transit Authority of River Ci...
Bowman Field

Charles Lindbergh landed the Spirit of St. Louis at the airport in 1927. During the 1920s and 1930s, Eastern Air Lines, Trans World Airlines...
Crescent Hill Reservoir

In 1860 the first water customers got river water minus most of the mud that had settled out. The original reservoir was on the hilltop on Z...
National Distillery

The first known commercial distillery in Jefferson County was built around 1860 by John Mattingly, on the banks of the Middle Fork Beargrass...
Farnsley-Moremen

A 300-acre historic site, called Riverside, the Farnsley-Moremen Landing, built circa 1837, the house stands as a testament to the important...
Locust Grove

Historic Locust Grove is a 55-acre 18th-century farm site and National Historic Landmark situated in eastern Jefferson County.
Brennan House

The last remaining Victorian mansion along what was once a residential street downtown dates to 1868, and features original interior finishe...

VISIT OUR ATTRACTIONS

NEIGHBORHOODS

TOUR OUR HISTORIC NEIGHBORHOODS

ARCHITECTURE

LEARN MORE ABOUT OUR ARCHITECTURE

Every visitor should experience at least one visit to a historic site.
Every Louisvillian can have knowledge about our traditional neighborhoods.
Every student can have a basic architectural vocabulary.

NEWEST ENTRIES

ABOUT THIS SITE

ADVERTISMENT

Note: This website is provided for entertainment purposes only, it does not cite sources or offer annotations, any material may be challenged or altered at anytime.