Walking Tour of Historic Frankfort

The highways that surround and bisect Kentucky's capitol city means you can live and work here for years without ever driving through its historic downtown. White settlement of Frankfort dates to before the Revolutionary War, and some of it is beautifully preserved.

From the Kentucky Heritage Council:

Liberty Hall Historic Site and the Kentucky Heritage Council/State Historic Preservation Office are collaborating on a walking tour of downtown Frankfort that will highlight the surviving buildings Sen. John Brown would have seen during his residency at Liberty Hall from 1801-1837.

Liberty Hall Historic Site is a National Historic Landmark featuring two houses: Liberty Hall (1796) built by John Brown, one of Kentucky's first U.S. senators, and the Orlando Brown House (1835), designed by Gideon Shryock and owned by Sen. Brown's second son. The tour will begin with the history of these homes and include background stories of how these buildings have been preserved for nearly two centuries. Other homes on the walking tour will include the Swigert-Taylor-Bradley House, which houses the Kentucky Heritage Council offices, and other buildings in Frankfort’s Corner in Celebrities, a historic district that was home to many residents notable in Kentucky history.

The two-hour tour will be offered twice in May, which is National Historic Preservation Month, beginning at 10 a.m. Saturday, May 18, and 2 p.m. Sunday, May 19. Tickets are $10 per person. For an additional $2, participants can also tour the interior of Liberty Hall following the walking tour of the neighborhood. Each tour will originate from the Orlando Brown House, 202 Wilkinson Street, and each will be limited to 25 people per day.

For more information or to purchase a ticket, call Liberty Hall Historic Site at 502-227-2560 or e-mail touradmin@libertyhall.org

Help Save the Next Dame Block

Wish there had been a way to save The Dame block in Lexington before Dudley Webb turned it into the Lexington Heritage Memorial Shithole?

Turn your regret into action. Help prevent the next Webb-tastrophe by adding your voice to the Kentucky State Historic Preservation Plan.

The Kentucky Heritage Council / State Historic Preservation Office has announced a series of meetings and an online survey to solicit public input in identifying goals and strategies for guiding Kentucky’s historic preservation efforts. The information will be used to compile the 2009-2014 Kentucky State Historic Preservation Plan, updated every five years as required by the National Park Service and provisions of the 1966 National Historic Preservation Act.

The first public meeting will be in Frankfort on Wednesday, February 25, from 2-3:30 p.m. at Paul Sawyier Public Library. (A complete list of meetings planned around the state follows.) The brief online survey is posted at the Heritage Council Web site, www.heritage.ky.gov.

An agency of the Kentucky Tourism, Arts and Heritage Cabinet, the Kentucky Heritage Council maintains updated inventories of historic structures and archaeological sites, nominates sites to the National Register of Historic Places and works in partnership with other state and federal agencies, local communities and interested citizens in statewide preservation efforts. As in years past, the new plan will serve as a statement of public policy that guides statewide preservation initiatives including the work of the Heritage Council, addresses critical issues affecting historic and cultural resources and recommends solutions to minimize threats to resources and barriers to preservation planning.

“We want to encourage broad public participation because this plan is for all Kentuckians, and every person and every community has a stake in understanding and defining preservation goals locally as well as those that drive our agency,” said Mark Dennen, Acting Heritage Council Director and State Historic Preservation Officer. “Kentucky is blessed to have abundant historic resources, and preserving this heritage for the future depends on how good a job we do now planning for their survival. This means everything from rehabilitating a downtown building to finding new uses for historic farm and industrial buildings – being creative in putting them to work for Kentucky’s economy.”

Click here for the schedule of public preservation planning meetings around the state.

Second Time as Farce

It's so reassuring that Lexington never learns from history. Once a generation, it it destroys a historic downtown landmark so young people can appreciate the aesthetic and cultural value of a giant empty shithole.

Twenty-seven years before developers raped and murdered The Dame block for a Cock-and-Balls Tower that will never be built, Wallace "The Weasel" Wilkinson demolished the two-century-old Phoenix Hotel.

The site that would become the Phoenix Hotel originally housed Postlethwaite's Tavern, which was constructed in 1800. Several name changes occurred between 1800 and 1820, one of which was to Wilson's Tavern, which was visited by Col. Aaron Burr in 1806. The Phoenix Hotel opened on this site in the 1820s. [1] After it was established, the hotel quickly became a well-known landmark. As a prominent structure closely linked with travelers and tourism in the early history of the city, it helped to give Lexington the reputation that led it to be called "Athens of the West".

The Phoenix Hotel was demolished in 1981 by Wallace Wilkinson, who planned to use the site to construct the World Coal Center skyscraper. This was never constructed, and is considered the largest failed development in the cityscape of Lexington. In its place, the Park Plaza was opened in 1987, followed by the construction and opening of the modern-day Phoenix Park.

Correction: the World Coal Center used to be the largest failed development in the cityscape of Lexington.

"Daddy, why is there a trash dump the size of a whole city block on Vine Street?"

"That's a monument, son. A monument to greedy, lying developers and the politicians who worship them."

Media Czech interviewed Lexington Mayor Jim Newberry at the Bluegrass Ball in D.C. last night and got the scoop.

Asked about if he's happy with CentrePointe's progress, he says yes. Blamed the citizens for its delay and said that construction will resume in the next couple of weeks.

I asked him if he knows who is financining the Webb's project, unlike anyone else in Lexington. He said he's confident that they have funding. Asked if he knows who it is or if the Webb's have shown him the financing. He says he has no idea, gave a flat no. Face getting a little nervous.

Asked if he's running for re-election in 2010- says he doesn't know, and he'll decide within the next 6 months.

I asked him about the email he sent criticizing the "media" and fellow citizens for opposing and questioning CentrePointe. Refused to elaborate on it at all. Asked him why he sent it out. Said that the media was spreading lies about it, and he wanted to counteract that with the truth (snort!)

ASked why this project will be different from all the other hotel projects around the country that are going belly up. Says that Marriot knows what they are doing, and it won't suffer half capacity like the other hotels because it serves the "higher end" folks.

Asked him if he regretted how he presented CentrePointe, surprising both citizens and council members. He said he regreted nothing, and he fully briefed the council on it before he presented it to the city. (oh REEEEEALLY?)

He said it won't be built by the 2010 Equestrian Games, and he NEVER said or implied that it would be ready by then. Hmmm.

Asked what he thought about how Lexington looked downtown with the big crater. This is big: He said that it will look good once CentrePointe OR SOMETHING ELSE is there. He then said it again: CentrePointe or SOMETHING ELSE. I noted that he said something else twiced and asked him if he thought it's possible that it will be something other than CentrePointe. He gave a flat angry NO and cut off the interview right there.

I'll make an easy prediction here. The carcass of the Dame will sit there abandoned and rotting for at least seven years - a year longer than the Phoenix languished.

And twenty years later, Dudley Webb, from his bed in the dementia unit of some stinking nursing home, will persuade yet another Lexington mayor that he can save the city with an expensive skyscraper.

All we have to do it let him demolish Ashland, Henry Clay's home.

Cross-posted at BlueGrassRoots.

Backwards Priorities

Two stories out of Frankfort this weekend perfectly illustrate how state government has its head up its ass on deciding what to preserve and what to destroy.

Franklin County is about to destroy a historic building to satisfy a state program to build giant ugly monuments to our lack of justice.

The church and its adjacent Good Shepherd School sit on Wapping Street in historic downtown Frankfort, just around the corner from the county courthouse that judges and officials say they outgrew long ago. The church, with its distinctive steeple, has been a signature of Frankfort's modest skyline and a keystone building in the historic district near the Kentucky River.

The steeple is depicted in several works of 19th-century artist Paul Sawyier, who lived in Frankfort.

And as Governor Beshear prepares to dismantle state services in the face of a depression, his second-biggest cabinet is proudly maintaining the tradition of creating unnecessary jobs for political cronies.

The Cabinet for Health and Family Services created a $63,000 job earlier this year for a woman who had dated a key lawmaker who helps oversee the cabinet.

The political appointment was made in June, at a time when many front-line positions that serve the state’s most vulnerable citizens remained vacant.

It's bad enough that the state's personnel laws and regulations institutionalize seniority, requiring the dismissal of newer staff, no matter how exceptional, to keep staff who have been around longer, no matter how borderline.

But spending a week crying to the press about having to cut services while adding management layers takes arrogant malfeasance to a new level.

And where are all those downtown Frankfort business owners who bitch and whine nonstop about how nobody visits downtown? Do they really think yet another concrete eyesore full of accused criminals and their lawyers is more business-friendly than a historic church that draws tourists?

This budget crisis is an opportunity to examine our priorities and figure out what's really important to save and what's even more important to destroy.

Keep the church; dump the deputy.

Cross-posted at BlueGrassRoots.