Built in 1926 and located on West Madison Street, the Allen Hotel was once Louisville’s largest hotel for Black guests during segregation. Featured in the Negro Motorist Green Book, it offered safe lodging when few places would. Notable figures, such as boxer Joe Louis, stayed in the fifty-room building.
The building is still in use today as part of an apartment complex.
Greenwood Cemetery was founded in 1903 in Louisville, Kentucky. It is a historic Black cemetery that fell into disrepair after neglectful owners stopped caring for it. In recent years, the local chapter of the National Association for Black Veterans (NABVETS) has volunteered its time to assist with upkeep. It’s estimated there are at least 800 veterans buried in the cemetery.
The NABVETS are there almost every Saturday helping maintain and improve the cemetery grounds.
If you would like to follow along to see the progress on the cemetery, you can find more info on their two Facebook pages. This one seems a bit more active.
The Ouerbacker-Clement House, located at 1633 West Jefferson Street in Louisville’s Russell neighborhood, is a historic mansion built in 1860 in the Richardsonian-Romanesque style. Originally owned by George Moore and later by steamboat captain Alexander Gilmore, the home was expanded in the 1890s by renowned architects Arthur Loomis and Charles Clarke.
Over the years, it housed local figures such as Samuel Ouerbacker, a coffee merchant, and Reverend George Clement and his son Rufus Clement, who later became the president of Atlanta University, now known as Clark Atlanta University.
Eventually the mansion served as a tax service office for 70 years until the city seized the property for unpaid taxes. The property languished until the city sold it for $1 in 2014. The company that purchased it restored and converted into six apartments.
The Italianate located on Chestnut Street is also known as the Doerhoefer-Hampton House. It was built in 1887 and placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1979. The local chapter of the Omega Psi Phi fraternity purchased the home in 2019 and restored it. It now serves as their local headquarters and meeting space.
Entombed below this monument are Mary Elizabeth and Mary Gwendolyn Caldwell. Born into wealth (the Caldwell family was one of Kentucky’s first multi-millionaire families), both were orphaned quite young when their parents passed away. Educated in Europe, both sisters married into European aristocracy when cash-poor European families were seeking wealthy Americans to marry.
This sculpture can be found in Cave Hill Cemetery in Louisville, Kentucky. It was sculpted by Gibert Bayes. It’s listed as part of the Smithsonian’s Save Our Sculpture database.
