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

Once a blend of wealthy, working-class and poor people. By the 1830s, free blacks began buying property west of 9th St. Affluent white families built elegant mansions on Walnut, Chestnut, and Jefferson Sts. in what was once the city’s most fashionable neighborhood.

By the 1890s white families began moving towards the east end. African Americans began moving west of 21st St. after World War I. By the 1930s the neighborhood was predominantly black.

By the 1940s Russell had become “Louisville’s Harlem” as African American theaters, restaurants, and night clubs lined area streets. Following World War II many middle class blacks left for newly integrated neighborhoods in the south and east ends.

Walnut Street, now Muhammad Ali Blvd., was a mecca for black entrepreneurs and big-name entertainers who performed at the popular nightspots Top Hat Club, Charlie Moore’s, The Idle Hour and Joe’s Palm Room.

Urban renewal efforts in the 1960s had the area’s business districts razed and many public housing complexes built.

The Western Branch of the Louisville Free Public Library, at 10th St. and Chestnut, America’s first public library open to African-Americans, opened in 1908.

Immediately west of downtown and named for a local African American educator Harvey Clarence Russell Sr. who moved to the area in 1926. Boundaries are W. Market St. on the north, 9th St. on the east, W. Broadway on the south and I-264 on the west.

Courier-Journal article link