German immigrants began moving into the area in the late 1840s, subdividing the farmland and building mostly wood-framed shotgun houses. Originally the area was known as Henderson, but it came to be known as California during California’s Gold Rush days because it was at the southwestern edge of Louisville. The neighborhood grew between two of the three railroad lines that traveled across the Ohio River in Louisville.

Early on the area was a dense combination of simple working-class homes mixed with a wide range of commercial use buildings. It became Louisville’s manufacturing and industrial heartland, employing thousands of people that produced products shipped by rail and used by millions of Americans.

African-Americans settled into the area after the Civil War. The early population was a dense mix of whites and blacks living in shotguns, with large mansions built by wealthy industrialists along Broadway, but many white families began leaving the older homes in the early 1900s as the western edge of the neighborhood expanded with an early example of suburban sprawl.

The neighborhood lost 50% of its population and single-family housing from 1950 to 1980. With the shift in manufacturing trends after World War II, along with urban renewal, the area became best known for its urban decay.

A small commercial district once existed around 18th St. (Dixie Hwy.) and Oak. St. just south of where the Brown-Forman Corporation headquarters and warehouses are located today.

Bounded by Broadway on the north, 9th St. on the east, Oak St. on the south, and 26th St. on the west.

Schnitzelburg is a special part of the larger area of Louisville known as Germantown. While all of Germantown includes the area roughly bound by Breckinridge St., Shelby St., Eastern Pkwy., and Beargrass Creek, Schnitzelburg is the southwest (Shelby and Eastern Pkwy.) corner of the larger area. Traditionally, Schnitzelburg was defined by the loop of the old Portland-Shelby bus, and before that by a mule drawn car that made the same loop. The loop began at Shelby and Goss, and went out Shelby to Burnett, Burnett to Texas, Texas to Goss and back to Shelby.

The area has a rich German-American heritage. When the original German settlers in Louisville were joined by a great influx of immigrants from Germany in the 1850-60s, the already established neighborhoods of Butchertown and Phoenix Hill had run out of space, so many newcomers and the younger generations moved ‘Out Shelby’ into the subdivisions of Colonel Arthur Campbell’s land, what is now Germantown. Schnitzelburg grew rapidly after St. Elizabeth Parish was founded in 1905.

Originally Schnitzelburg was rural, with large backyard gardens, brickyards, and dairy farms. The area today is full of shotgun cottages, bungalows with front porch swings, and many small businesses, restaurants & pubs. Landmarks include Manual Stadium, St. Elizabeth Church, Emerson Park, & the old Louisville Textile Mill.

Schnitzelburg is bounded by Shelby St., Clarks Ln., & Goss Avenue (Poplar Level Rd.).

www.schnitzelburg.org

One of the city’s many Olmsted parks and the surrounding early streetcar suburb was named after the city’s mayor in the 1890s. The defining feature of the neighborhood is the stone bridge, circa 1904, which runs through the middle of the park to span a low valley where two small streams converged at the archway on the way to the south fork of Beargrass Creek at Castlewood Ave.

General John Breckinridge Castleman donated land along Castlewood Ave. that became part of the lower park and a separate tract now called the Castlewood Open Space, a short distance away.

The park and surrounding subdivisions evolved slowly, the first subdivision was laid out in 1873 on the flatter terrain between Baxter, Bardstown Rds. and Edenside Ave., but because of its relatively remote location from downtown, development did not pick up until the 1880s. The extension of a streetcar line down Bardstown Road to Bonnycastle Ave. and the establishment of nearby Cherokee Park created more demand for housing in the area.

Further west, newer sections between St. Louis and Calvary cemeteries were developed from 1907 until the 1930s with relatively strict deed restrictions on the lots, including deep setbacks,  exteriors only of brick, stucco or stone, utilities and wires located in alleys, and the prohibition of wood fences.

Today, the area around Cross Rd. and Hill Rd. features some of the most eclectic and attractive residential architecture in the city.

Bounded by Rufer Ave. on the north, Bardstown Rd. on the east, Eastern Pkwy. and Calvary Cemetery on the south, and Beargrass Creek and Barret Ave. on the west.

www.tylerpark.org

Aneighborhood landmark is the Bullock-Clifton House, a former farmhouse at the corner of Richmond and Rosedale, built in the ‘steamboat gothic’ style in 1834.

Like many places in the U.S., most of the streets were named after the early landowners who turned into developers in the early 1900s. A section of the neighborhood is one of the city’s more densely populated areas and is a National Historic Register District.

Deer Park includes two pedestrian courts whose long rows of houses, with no conventional street, are accessed by alleys and sidewalks running through the small lots. Ivanhoe Ct. was built in 1914, and the slightly smaller Maplewood Pl. were both built during the streetcar suburb era.

Due to the lack of geographical obstacles such as steep hills or creeks, the neighborhood developed quickly and uniformly. Shotgun houses and modest 2 story Victorians make up the majority of the stock in the oldest sections, while modest craftsmen-style houses dominate further out, along with a few small ranch style homes.

The neighborhood also has one of the last of the pre-World War II subdivisions in the area with larger houses built in various historical revival styles.

Some of the somewhat narrow east/west streets are now one-way, which is an oddity for a traditional neighborhood somewhat far from downtown.

www.deerparklouisville.com

Aneighborhood and former independent town northwest of downtown Louisville. Situated along a bend of the Ohio River just below the Falls of the Ohio, where the river curves to the north and then to the south, at the northwester tip of urban Louisville. In its early days it was the largest of the six major settlements at the falls, the others being Shippingport and Louisville in Kentucky, and New Albany, Clarksville, and Jeffersonville on the Indiana side.

Laid out in 1811, with a northeast to southwest street grid between what is now 36th and 33rd Street along the Ohio River, and included a large wharf. The settlement quickly grew to the east, in a northwest to southeast street grid, which noticeably contrasts to the east-west grid of adjacent areas of Louisville.

The advent of steamboats on the Mississippi occurred simultaneously with Portland’s development, allowing the Ohio River to be used as a major freight shipping route in what was then the American frontier. Portland was located just downstream from the only natural obstacle on the Ohio River, so all large boats traveling on the Ohio had to stop to move their freight by land around the Falls and reload them on another boat. Portland’s wharf flourished with taverns, warehouses, and shipyards. By 1814 French immigrants had begun populating the town.

Portland became a rival of Louisville and the nearby settlement of Shippingport. The three were connected by a road in 1818 called the Louisville & Portland Turnpike, which became Portland Ave.

In 1830 the Louisville and Portland Canal was completed around the Falls, causing many of the warehouses and shipyards to close and shifted economic power on the Falls to nearby Louisville, although Portland continued to grow as many French and Irish immigrants moved there.

Portland continued to flourish into the 1930s when the largest Ohio River flood in recorded history occurred in 1937 and inundated all of Portland, with areas closest to the river being nearly wiped out. Plans began immediately to protect the area with a flood wall, but World War II occupied the priority of the government’s engineers. Eight years later in 1945 the second largest flood in Louisville’s history occurred. In its aftermath all areas of Portland nearest to the river were razed, including the Portland Wharf, and a gigantic flood wall was built to a height three feet above the level of the 1937 flood. Despite the loss of many of area’s oldest buildings to the floodwaters, portions of the neighborhood away from the flood wall were largely untouched by urban renewal, and retain a great number of pre-Civil War era buildings. Although many older mansions still exist in Portland, the vast majority of homes built in the area were shotgun houses.

Boundaries are the Ohio River along the northwest, north, and northeast, 10th St. on the east, Market St. on the south, and the Shawnee Golf Course on the west.

Historic Portland

Louisville’s Lost City of Portland