How bad was Louisville back in the 70s and 80s?

[kingcopper]

The highlands stretches of Bardstown Road have just gotten more dense since the 80's. I will say this, we enjoyed an eclectic and inspiring plethora of alternative music scenes all over the Highlands and Butchertown that may not be there anymore.

[JefferyT]

I lived in Louisville full time from 1971 to 1977 and part time from 1977-1984, my Jr High, high school, and college years, then left town to look for work.

So set the way-back machine to the 1970s & early 80s:

Old Louisville

By the 1970s Belgravia and St James Court was well on its way to being gentrified and restored, with restoration activity moving out to the major north-south streets; 4th & 3rd & 2nd and around Central Park during the 1970s and early 80s. The neighborhood, then as now, had reputation for break-ins but wasn’t considered unsafe, perfectly OK to walk around. Also, already in the 1970s the St James Court art fair was becoming a very popular event, to the point of TARC running shuttle buses to and from the Butchertown Octoberfest (more on that later). UofL was expanding throughout this period, additions to the Speed, new classrooms buildings, a new library, etc. Professionals had converted some old mansions to offices, and Shakespeare in the Park was already underway.

So Old Louisville in the 1970s, the core of it between Ormsby and UofL, already seemed a good place to live and a good place to invest, as there was a lot of renovation work underway. Also, after Harvey Sloan was elected in 1973 (a watershed political event), the mayor lived there.

Highlands/Bardstown Road:

The areas directly along the park and between Bardstown and the park where always popular, never in bad shape (my parents came close to moving here when we were transferring from Chicago). The neighbors wanted to keep it that way, which is why The Willow was a big development controversy of that era. I don’t think this area ever had a working-class reputation. Blue collar was maybe more west of Bardstown, north of Tyler Park.

During the 1970s the Cherokee Triangle underwent gentrification and became a hot area. The neighborhood group sponsored an annual art fair along Cherokee Blvd, copying St James Court. Bardstown Rd in the 1970s wasn’t run-down, just dated, a bit old, with the sprigs and sprouts of new things as well as the antique shops, which sort of pioneered the area. Bardstown & Bonnycastle was sort of the nexus of interesting stuff, with Karma Records, Leatherhead, and Twice Told Books etc, as sort of 1960s counterculture places (not so much Twice Told).

I think in the later 1970s and early to mid 1980s things really picked up, with better restaurants opening up like Bristol, Metro, Formally Myra’s (on Grinstead), Jack Frys (which become popular then), Lillys and others, as well as the punk/new wave place Tewligans. Phoenix Hill Tavern opened in this era, too. Carmichaels came in the ;ater 1970s, I think. What’s happened in the 1990s was Bardstown becoming more intensified and denser, as has been noted, but the place was already popular in the 1980s.

Frankfort Avenue

Crescent Hill area was undergoing residential gentrification in the 1970s, but not Clifton, and none of this manifested itself as retail on Frankfort. I think the first thing that opened on Frankfort as part of the “scene” was an art gallery complex in Clifton, near the School for the Blind (this was in the 1980s)

Butchertown

It’s really funny reading modern perceptions of this area, knowing the recent history. Butchertown was a happening place in the 1970s. Bakery Square opened as a mixed use retail/office thing with shops on the first two floors and a restaurant in the courtyard, and the Butchertown Pub around the corner was a live music venue drawing from outside the neighborhood. The aforementioned Octoberfest became quite popular and drew from around the metro area.

There was some early gentrification here too, but more on Storey Avenue east of the freeway, and around the church. However the preservationists’ goal was not to really “gentrify” the area as preserve it, not wanting to drive out the blue collar residents.

”Special Comment”

It seems there was a change of heart or change in attitude in the 1970s and into the 1980s where enough people took an interest in the city again, in urban living and culture, to provide the critical mass to seed things. This was the foundation the scene of the 1990s and 2000s built on (and some people active now in development and such grew up in that earlier era).

A lot of the urban pioneers of the 1970s & early 80s were the “young professionals” of their era, now probably retired or near retirement, or in middle age for the younger cohorts, so the city was already attracting them back then (not necessarily from out-of-state).

I give some credit for the changed attitudes during the 1970s to the Bingham family, because their media did a lot of cheerleading around historic preservation and neighborhood revitalization during that decade. I’m pretty sure this was a conscious editorial decision on their part.

Yet it wasn’t just the media. The locals had to be receptive, too. It’s a credit to Louisvilians that they don’t have this “Louisville sucks” attitude one see’s in other cities. There is a healthy provincialism there, that is cosmopolitan while still valuing the local, rather than saying the local sucks so let’s leave.

Louisville may have sucked in the early 1970s, but the locals decided to turn that around. It took awhile, but you all are seeing the results.

(apologies for the long-winded post)

[JefferyT]

Fourth Street was basically just a row of wig shops.

...yeah, the funky 70s' River City Mall era. Anyone remember the House of Adam?

I think the last vestige of that is the block of 4th roughly between Muhammed Ali and Chestnut.

[JefferyT]

And, yeah, air pollution was pretty bad. Maybe it still is? The problem was the high heat and humidity, valley setting, and ozone from auto emissions.

I can imagine what it was like back during coal-fired industry era. Probably why TB was such a problem back then.