The neighborhood was a dense urban and industrial area when the city bought 17-acres and created a park named for Kentucky’s first governor, Isaac Shelby, and was designed by the Olmsted firm.

The area developed in three stages, the northern section began around 1847, though settlement was slow until around 1876. In 1870 the southern-third was platted. The railroad tracks on the eastern and southern edges brought a lot of industry and businesses to the area. The middle third of the neighborhood remained mostly vacant until 1894, when the Goss Ave.-Texas Ave. streetcar loop, created in 1891, and the proximity to the Germantown and Schnitzelburg neighborhoods to the east, prompted a large number of Germans to locate to the neighborhood.

One of the city’s nine Carnegie libraries is located at 600 E. Oak St., and is the only one designed in conjunction with a city park. The Shelby Park library is Beaux Art style architecture, created during a time when physical fitness and active recreation was a driving force in park design. The Shelby Park library is now used as a community center.

The neighborhood became mostly African-American-owned as the suburbs expanded in the late 20th century. Today, the neighborhood is making a comeback as younger families move in, much like the Germantown and Schnitzelburg neighborhoods have done.

Other local landmarks include:

St. Vincent de Paul Catholic Church
1207 S. Shelby St.

Falls City Jeans and Woolen Mills
1010 S. Preston St.

Preston-St. Catherine St. Historic District
313−337 East St. Catherine St.

George H. Tingley Elementary School
1311−1317 S. Preston St.

Bounded by Kentucky St. on the north, the CSX railroad tracks on the east and south, and I-65 on the west.

Olmsted Parks

Historically a black neighborhood since the Civil War, it is the only neighborhood in Louisville that has had such a continuous presence.

Brick production was a huge industry in the city during the 1800s that created millions of kiln-fired bricks a year that were made from clay that lies below the surface in the city’s floodplain.

A huge number of smoke-producing brick kilns existed in this neighborhood before the 1880s, before supplies of clay ran out. The abandoned water-filled clay pits may have given another nickname of ‘Frogtown’ to the area just southeast of downtown.

Residential development by whites of German ancestry had begun in the 1850s, but thousands of freed slaves from areas around rural Kentucky arrived after the Civil War. It was solidly an African-American neighborhood by 1870. The streetcar line was extended down Preston St. to Kentucky St. in 1865, spurring additional growth.

Smoketown was once densely populated, with its shotgun houses and narrow streets, it had a population of over 15,000 by 1880, but African-American property ownership was rare, with most living in properties rented from whites.

By the 1960s, the area had high crime and unemployment rates, causing massive population loss, most of the shotgun houses had been razed and housing projects had been built in their place.

One of the city’s nine Carnegie libraries is located at 600 Lampton St.

Today, the area is undergoing a major transformation with new, mixed-income housing.

Smoketown Voice

In the late-1880s this neighborhood was mostly forest and farmland with scattered estates along Bardstown Rd. A 158-acre farm, purchased here in 1848, later lent its name to the neighborhood.

One of those mansions, named Walnut Grove, also known as the Everett/Bonnycastle mansion and built by slaves in the 1860s is still standing today, located on a bell-shaped parcel land bounded by Cowling, Spring Dr. and Speed Ave. at the end of Maryland Ave. (photo below)

In 1906, the mansion was sold to a private school, along with the last of the remaining estate property to complete the neighborhood subdividing that had begun in 1872, and was greatly expanded in the 1890s when Cherokee Park opened and the trolley was completed to the turnaround at Bonnycastle Ave., the steetcar route was extended to Douglass Loop in 1912, and later on out to Taylorsville Rd.

A synagogue purchased the Everett/Bonnycastle mansion and estate property in 1948, they greatly altered its look, removing the mansion’s porches and building a synagogue where the driveway had been. Today, the back of that building comes within a few feet of the front of the mansion.

In the 1920s, several large apartment buildings were built in the neighborhood. The largest, the 11-story Commodore, built in 1929, is on Bonnycastle at Cowling Aves.

The mansions of Spring Dr., developed in the late-1940s and early-1950s, recognizable by their 200-foot front yards, are perched atop large hills. Louisville’s most famous Derby party, the Barnstable-Brown Party, is held at one of the homes.

Strict deed restrictions along Cherokee Pkwy., Casselberry and Sulgrave Roads, encouraged larger houses. The Bonnycastle neighborhood also has a carless pedestrian court, Edgewood Place.

This traditional neighborhood displays a rich and eclectic mix of Victorian and historical revival styles, as well as Craftsman bungalows.

The Everett/Bonnycastle estate originally covered much of what is now the Bonnycastle neighborhood, bounded by Eastern Pkwy., Bardstown Rd., Speed Ave. and Cherokee Park.

Cornerstone 2020 Bonnycastle Neighborhood Plan