When I decided to go to Louisville for a long weekend, a lot of people I knew gave me strange looks. But last year I did some work for a wine distribution company who worked in Ohio and Kentucky, and met some people who insisted Louisville was a great city, had great restaurants, and above all, was revitalizing their downtown.
Columbus is in serious need of some downtown revitalization, and although I don't personally have any money to contribute to that cause, I like to offer my thoughts to those who do. I still have hope that we can do it. I wanted to see what Louisville was doing.
Wow. A few years ago, downtown Louisville was empty - crumbling buildings, empty storefronts, lack of business. And then the Louisville Slugger operation moved right downtown (half a block away from our hotel); that sparked an interest in renovation. It is an ongoing process, but what they have done so far is pretty amazing.
One thing Louisville has going for it are the amazing facades and architecture (Louisville has the largest number of iron facades in the country). It seemed that everywhere I went, there was something interesting I wanted to photograph.
Where buildings had been crumbling, the facades were kept while the buildings were being rebuilt.
Our hotel was located on Main Street, right across from Museum row. For a few blocks, you can go from the Science museum to several art museums, and the performing arts center. A few blocks south and there is the theater district with two iconic hotels - the Brown (more on that later) and the Seelbach Hilton.
One thing I found very interesting was the focus on art that seemed to be everywhere. It might be related to the fact that we were staying in a museum hotel, but there seemed to be unsnobby art wherever we went. For example, as an homage to the iron facades, the trees on main street are all framed with ironworks; each piece relates to the business which used to be housed in the building next to the tree, and a different brick pattern in the sidewalk, running from the tree to the front door of the building, indicates the building has an iron facade. Our hostess from the Louisville Convention and Visitor's Bureau told us we could walk around with a magnet and it would cling to any of the iron facades.
Waiting for our car from the hotel valet, I heard something which reminded me of sailing - the lines clanging against the mast of the boat - and noticed giant wind chimes stretched between two buildings across the street. These small, surprising things are what make the city cool.
It was encouraging to see what Louisville has been doing with their downtown area, and I hope Columbus will learn some things from them. We have the buildings, we just need some affordable rents and confidence that we can get people downtown to spend some leisure time. Additionally, we could stop rewarding companies for moving to the suburbs (with tax abatements and the like), and instead reward them for taking over empty offices in the heart of the city.
A cool sculpture with bike rack, in the Thomas Merton square.
I saw this cool tag a few places around town:
