West St. Catherine Neighborhood Association

Any suggestions on how to bring Old Louisville to the forefront in the public eye?

Most of our residents know that our neighborhood is an unrivalled showpiece of late Victorian architecture. Many of you know more about it than I do, but I have been told that the district's extent and quality rivals justifiably famous areas in Charleston and Savannah.

Unfortunately, the powers that be don't seem to be attuned to this potential. Louisville will be at a crossroads when the merger comes--will we follow Savannah and Charleston with attention to preservation and restoration, making Old Louisville into the tourist and small business attraction it has always promised to be? Or will we follow Lexington's example (popular practice in Louisville, for some reason) and become a ring of malls surrounding a decaying interior?

How do we publicize what we have? How do we set our architectural heritage before the eyes and imaginations of our community?

Any suggestions?

By Michael Williams

Preservation

Work with other groups in the inner city that have historic districts that are more or less being ignored by the locals. The Louisville Historical League seems to have taken the place of Preservation Alliance, but they have been more effective on indiuvidual sites rather than areas but that can change if enough people get involved.

another good suggestion

Thanks as well for this suggestion, Elizabeth. We have been working with both the organizations you mention, and have had some success with both. The problem is a more global thing, however: people out in the county are completely uninformed (or misinformed) about one of Louisville's greatest potential drawing cards. This is one of the most beautiful assemblages of Victorian architecture in the United States; if it were to receive half the media attention that the Hurstborne and St. Matthews areas receive, we would soon marvel at what an attraction it had become. Around the St. James Art Fair, TV crews come into our neck of the woods, talk about things to buy and mention the surroundings as an afterthought: for the rest of the year, Old Louisville is virtually invisible. Preservation societies do some wonderful things, but our goal is to attract tourism and business: we have the ''commodity'' in our superb architecture, but we have few to no friends among the powers that be. Where do we go from here?

By Michael Williams