Last month, news emerged about the planned transformation of the closed Merchants Ice and Cold Storage tower in Louisville, Kentucky, into an office building.
Tag: Kentucky
I stumbled upon a circa 1970-71 Chevrolet Corvette Stringray, abandoned on the side of a road in Kentucky.
Sherman Cahal and Adam Paris, authors of the newly released book Abandoned Kentucky, recently visited the former Old Taylor Distillery complex near Frankfort, Kentucky, to compile a series of before-and-after photos. Colonel Edmund H. Taylor acquired property along Glenn’s Creek and Versailles Pike and established Old Taylor Distillery in 1887. It was intended to be different from the distilleries of that era which had little confidence from consumers due to product quality. From its iteration, Old Taylor was designed to be a showcase for bourbon. Drawing heavily from his travels through Scotland, England, Ireland, and elsewhere, Taylor designed his distillery complex with buildings that sported thick walls composed of local limestone from Tyrone, battlements at the roof line, and round corner towers. Inside the plant’s walls were gardens and rooms where Taylor entertained guests, state officials, and dignitaries. The passage of prohibition, a nationwide constitutional law that strictly prohibited the production, importation, transportation, and sale of alcoholic beverages, caused Old Taylor Distillery to close in 1920. National Distillers, formed out of a merger in 1924, acquired the mothballed complex in 1935 and operated the distillery under the Old Taylor name until 1972. In 1987, National Distillers sold the plant to American Brands, and James B. Beam Distillery, part of American Brands, used Old Taylor’s warehouses for storage. A portion of the Old Taylor campus, including the bottling plant and some warehouses, was declared surplus and abandoned. American Brands then sold the Old Taylor brand to Sazerac in 2009. What followed…
We are bursting with pride to be able to hold our finished book, Abandoned Kentucky, in our hands. We were so excited and couldn’t wait to see it. It is simply stunning and it’s something else to go from concept to hardcover reality.
Located along the Kentucky River Palisades is a unique but abandoned fluorspar mine turned speakeasy.
An abandoned railroad bridge over the Levisa Fork in Pike County, Kentucky seemed a little out of place.
Snaking through the southern reaches of Floyd County, Kentucky is the remains of the Chesapeake & Ohio Railway Long Fork Subdivision that connected to some of the most prosperous coal mines in the state.
The Amanda Furnace and BOF at the former Armco/AK Steel Ashland Works were simultaneously imploded at 8:30 AM this morning. Steelmaking operations were idled on December 15, 2015, and the plant was closed for good by November 2019. The Hanging Rock Iron Region in southern Ohio, northeastern Kentucky, and western West Virginia produced iron between 1818 and 1916, which helped build armaments for the Civil War, hulls for the Monitor and Merrimac ships, kettles and pots, tools, and wagon wheels. It was predicted that iron ore in the Hanging Rock Iron Region would last for 2,700 years but most of the iron seams had been depleted by the 1900s. Traditional blast furnaces, a type of metallurgical furnace used for smelting to produce pig iron, continued to be built until 1963 when the Amanda opened at Armco’s Ashland Works. The crown jewel of the steelmaking industry, it was the largest of its type in the world. Ashland Works at its peak was the second-largest facility by Armco. It boasted the world’s first continuous sheet rolling mill, which was later replaced with a hot-strip mill in 1953. A cold reduction mill, strip pickler, light gauge Zincgrip line, and a heavy gauge Zincgrip line were completed in 1954. Armco had developed the Zincgrip process in 1936 by offering the first zinc-coated (and later aluminum-coated) coils that were far superior to older processes. The open-hearth furnaces were shut down in 1969, which coincided with the start-up of the basic oxygen furnace complex (BOF). But…
Over the last weekend, I visited the historic but closed Columbia Theatre in Paducah, Kentucky, with a small group of local historians and talented photographers. Developed by Leo F. Keiler, the 2,000-seat Columbia Theatre opened on April 18, 1927. The elaborately designed facility featured Palladian, Moorish, and Greek architecture with a facade of blue and white terra cotta tiles that included spiraled Byzantine-style columns, classical urns, busts of Greek goddesses, a name sign illuminated with 5,000 lights, and a marquee lit with 2,000 varicolored globes. Inside, the theater was furnished in fashionable shades of green, pink, tan, and blue, the woodwork finished in an antique grey, and the columns and ornaments outlined in gold leaf. The walls were adorned with Kentucky nature scenes, while the ceiling contained an art glass installation. Four thousand patrons attended two evening performances that were capped with Elinor Glyn’s feature motion picture “It,” which starred Clara Bow and Antonio Moreno. The Columbia was extensively remodeled with steel and bronze decorative sconces and framing and reopened to crowds on August 14, 1952. A second screen was created by enclosing the balcony, which opened on January 29, 1976. In 1982, the Kentucky Oaks Mall opened on the outskirts of Paducah, which included the construction of a ten-screen multiplex theater. Facing a projected $50,000 loss, owner Jack Keiler closed the Columbia Theatre in 1987. The first step towards the restoration of the theater came in 2004 when the facility was donated to the city by the Keller family, which…
The American Lung Association was formed in 1904 in response to the epidemic of tuberculosis, a serious infectious bacterial disease that was the leading cause of death in the United States. Commonly referred to as consumption, tuberculosis was characterized by fatigue, sweats, and general wasting of the patient. There was no reliable treatment for the disease. Some doctors prescribed bleeding and purgings while others advised their patients to rest and exercise. Very few recovered and about 450 Americans died of tuberculosis each day. Typically, tuberculosis sanatoriums were privately operated or locally controlled facilities. For Kentucky, Louisville was the only city to take on such a task after they established a tax, levied by the city and county, which enabled the construction of Waverly Hills Tuberculosis Sanatarium in 1909-11. It was followed by Hazelwood Sanatorium, also in Louisville, and Jackson Hill Sanatorium in Paducah. Provisions were also made for tubercular inmates at the Eddyville Penitentiary and the Western State Asylum for the Insane. All of those facilities were designed for incipient cases and those who had a more advanced case of tuberculosis had to seek medical attention in other states if they could afford it. Furthermore, the state institutions could house less than 100 patients altogether. In 1912, the General Assembly of Kentucky established the State Tuberculosis Commission that authorized the construction of specific hospitals for the care and treatment of people affected with tuberculosis. It wasn’t until 1944 when the General Assembly created the State Tuberculosis Hospital Commission and six…
On a sunny afternoon, I explored the remnants of the Chesapeake & Ohio Railway Lexington Subdivision near Ashland, Kentucky by air. The 109-mile route between Lexington and Ashland had been completed in 1881 by the Newport News & Mississippi Valley Road and its predecessors, including the Lexington & Big Sandy Railroad, the Elizabethtown, Lexington & Big Sandy Railroad, and the Ashland Coal & Iron Railway. The line eventually fell under the control of the Chesapeake & Ohio Railway and its successor, the Chessie System. Years of declining traffic caused all but 11 miles of the route to be abandoned by 1985. The remaining portion of the Lexington Subdivision between Ashland and Rush was left in place to serve Kentucky Electric Steel at Coalton, brick kilns at Princess, and an Armco pipe fabrication shop at Summit. The Big Run regional landfill, first proposed in Coalton in the 1990s, was constructed between 2001-04. Originally proposed to collect only 7,000 tons of trash over its lifetime, the landfill’s plan was amended to allow for as much as 43 million tons of trash from New York and New Jersey to be accepted by rail. To accommodate the heavier, taller railcars, a three-track yard was constructed at Coalton, welded rail was installed on curves, and the Ashland and Princess tunnels were enlarged to accommodate the taller cars. By 2013, Big Run had become the state’s largest landfill and one of the biggest in the nation, accepting more than 3,500 tons of waste per day. The Lexington Subdivision,…
Many years ago, I hiked out to these derelict cabooses, passenger cars, and miscellaneous cars along the former Louisville & Southern Railway Lexington to Lawrenceburg Division in central Kentucky.
It’s been a long ten years since we had a white Christmas down in northeast Kentucky. I took advantage of the serenity and beauty to stop at Limeville.
Victorian-era adornments, often referred to as “gingerbread” details, are among my favorite architectural features, as they transform simple designs into elaborate and ornate structures.
The Millard F. Field Building, located at Winchester Avenue and 16th Street in downtown Ashland, Kentucky, was home to the Field Department Store and Sears.