Butchertown Historic District

About this property

Butchertown is a neighborhood just east of downtown Louisville, Kentucky, United States, bounded by I-65, Main Street, I-71, Beargrass Creek and Mellwood Avenue. The Butchertown Historic District is a 50 acres (20 ha) part which was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1976. It includes the 1914-built Beaux Arts Stockyard Exchange Building designed by D.X. Murphy and Brother. The first homes in the area were laid out in the 1820s along the newly completed Louisville to Lexington turnpike, referred to in that stretch as Story Avenue. Two of the first landowners in the area, Whig Party loyalist George Buchanan and Isaac Stewart, had the new community's streets named after major Whig Party members, such as John Quincy Adams, Daniel Webster and Henry Clay. In the 1850s Beargrass Creek was rerouted away from what is now downtown Louisville and through the area, making it an ideal area for butchers and stockyards because the animal remains could be dumped in the creek and such businesses were banned in the downtown area for sanitation reasons. The population swelled as waves of German immigrants entered the area. Bourbon Stockyards, built in 1836, was the first stockyard to locate in Butchertown. A bank is in portions of the original building. Due to the high German population, and resentment of them by supporters of the Know Nothing party, Butchertown was where the "Bloody Monday" riots of August 1855 began as Know Nothings tried to prevent Germans and Irish from voting in an election. The riots killed 22 people. For the first 100 years of its existence, Butchertown was a thriving residential and industrial area, though other Louisville neighborhoods regarded it as a haven for drunkards and brawlers. However, the area began declining after the great Ohio River flood of 1937 destroyed many of the homes there. Many other homes were demolished for the construction of the Ohio River flood wall, the construction of interstates and the Kennedy Interchange ("Spaghetti Junction") through the area, and the expansion of industrial land into formerly residential areas. Suburbanization continued to bring the residential areas into decline, until the few remaining residents began lobbying for rezoning (the entire area was zoned as industrial), and fixing up vacant and underrepaired houses. Since the 1990s, the area has attracted many young professionals. In recent years, the east Market Street area of downtown Louisville has seen a great deal of revitalization, including the expansion of Waterfront Park, Louisville Slugger Field, and the conversion of empty store fronts into new condominiums. This has helped spur further improvements in Butchertown itself, as many new antique shops and art galleries have opened off the Market Street corridor.

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Property data from the National Register of Historic Places, National Park Service (public domain).

Description adapted from Wikipedia under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

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