Louisville’s founding and its first 100 years of growth were tied to the river.  The Ohio River was a willing path for westward expansion, and Louisville was to be an important milepost.  The river was the primary source of transportation and commerce; correspondingly physical growth followed the river.

The 1791 plan for Louisville showed a simple grid pattern on an east/west axis with the river.  Three 90-foot-wide streets – Main, Market and Jefferson – ran east/west, parallel to the river, and were followed by 60-foot-wide Green (later Liberty) Street.  Numbered streets, also with a width of 60 feet, ran north/south, perpendicular to the Ohio.  Commercial activity was concentrated close to the water’s edge on Main Street.

Main and Market

By 1830, Louisville – with a population over 10,000 – was Kentucky’s largest city.  Onset of the steamboat era, opening of the Louisville and Portland Canal, and founding of the banking and manufacturing industries signaled a period of rapid physical and commercial expansion.  Downtown Louisville’s boundaries stretched southward to Prather Street (later Broadway), eastward to Beargrass Creek and westward to Twelfth Street.

Yet even with this fast-paced growth, the city and Downtown were a compact unit of two-to-three-story buildings, where people lived and worked in close proximity.  Main and Market Streets remained the heart of the city, the center of activity.

Street Car Suburbs

With the 1860 founding of the Louisville & Nashville Railroad and construction of the Ohio River Railroad Bridge in 1870, Louisville burst to the forefront of the railroad industry.  Technological innovations in transportation and building methods were changing the look and sense of Downtown.  Increased mobility and immigration spurred expansion, pushing development outwards to the west to the Russell neighborhood, south to Old Louisville, east to Phoenix Hill and southwest to Germantown.

The Center city remained a bustling place to live and work, but the orientation of the city was changing.  With the rise of railroads, the river – and in turn Main and Market Streets – began to lose importance as commercial and transportation lifelines.

Skyscrapers and Olmsted

As the turn of the century approached, Louisville continued to be engulfed in change.  The rate of technological change in the mid-to-late 1800s had not slowed.  Exciting building methods and early efforts at city planning were making a profound imprint on the cityscape.  During the 1890s Louisville saw its first “skyscraper” at the northwest corner of Fourth and Main and witnessed the birth of one of the city’s dearest possessions – a park and parkway system designed by Frederick Law Olmsted.  With development of the streetcar and park system, the city experienced the emergence of its first true suburbs.  Development followed the streetcar lines, east along Frankfort Avenue to Crescent Hill, out Broadway to the Highlands, and south along Second and Fourth Streets to Old Louisville and South Louisville.  The city fathers and Olmsted combined good access and scenic beauty to create luxurious new neighborhoods.

This movement at the city’s edges was mirrored in the Core:  Downtown’s activity center was shifting in a south-central direction from Main Street to Fourth Street.

Fabulous Fourth Street and the Magic Corner

For the first quarter of the 20th Century, Louisville continued the expansion that had typified the late 1800s.  Like the rest of America, Louisville felt a surge of growth following World War I.  The city was growing, industry was thriving and advances in auto, air and transit services were nurturing an increasingly mobile population.

During this period of growth and success, two changes in particular had the most significant effect on the look and feel of the center city – one immediate and the other a more gradual transformation.  First, the Second Street Bridge opened in 1926, forming the first vehicular link across the Ohio River at Louisville.  Second, by the 1920s the intersection of Fourth Avenue and Broadway – the so-called “magic corner” – had become the heart of the city.  With movement of the city’s activity center south from Fourth and Main Streets to Fourth and Broadway, Downtown – literally and figuratively – was turning away from its historical and commercial links to the Ohio River.

Depression, Recovery and Urban Renewal

The growth and prosperity of the early 1920s was halted with the Great Depression.  Recovery from the economic downturn was slow, and for impoverished residential neighborhoods flanking the Fourth Avenue Core, the 1940s and 1950s brought no sign of recovery.  The city’s overall economy was boosted by the pre- and post-World War II production periods, yet these benefits were felt mainly outside the central business district.

Suburbanization was taking hold.  Grandiose expressway plans of the ‘40s, ‘50s and ‘60s were envisioned to bring throngs of shoppers and businesses to Downtown. They did just the opposite, drawing businesses, shoppers and residents away from Downtown.  The expressways imposed an additional liability on Downtown:  they served to divide – and at points sever – the central business district.  The route of I-65 through Downtown was debated for almost nine years.  But when finally completed in 1963, it separated the Medical Center from the body of Downtown and drew the northeastern border of the central business district.

The decades of the ‘50s, ‘60’s and ‘70s saw numerous reactions to the physical and economic decline of the inner city and to the changing retail and financial role of Downtown relative to suburban growth.  In the 1960s, Louisville – like most American cities –utilized Urban Renewal as a tool to revitalize or “suburbanize” the center city.  Although many of Downtown’s historic resources were lost to Urban Renewal, a good deal was gained through the process as well.  The historic preservation movement emerged in the early 1970s, both as a reaction to Urban Renewal and as a recognition of the built environment as an important resource.

Vision and Partnerships – A City Reborn

At the same time, the public and private sectors were joining forces to coordinate efforts to rejuvenate Downtown through their dedication and partnership.  Civic and business leaders, in cooperation with government, took a proactive role in Downtown’s revitalization.  The Hyatt Regency Hotel, the Galleria and The Brown Hotel and Theater Square are a few examples of such cooperative efforts.

Development projects of the 1970’s and 1980’s have taken Downtown and Louisville nearly full circle.  The Riverfront Plaza/Belvedere, First National Tower, the Kentucky Center for the Arts, rehabilitation in the 600, 700, and 800 blocks of West Main Street, and the Humana Building provide a glimpse of the future and of the past – Louisville returning to Main Street and the river.  Activity and interest on the Waterfront and Main Street are both exciting and historically familiar.

A New Century

Strategic and focused urban planning and political will pushed Louisville forward in the 1990’s and the early 2000’s.  The formation of the Waterfront Development Corporation and the development and implementation of the master plan pinned by George Hargraves, changed the riverfront forever by creating a community gathering space, a central open space where our region connects with the River.  West Main Street was transformed into Museum Row and proclaimed one of the greatest streets in America by the American Planning Association.  Convention and visitor business was embraced with an expanded Kentucky International Convention Center and well over 1000 new hotel rooms.  Once again downtown became the entertainment destination for the region, with 4th Street Live! attracting over 4.5 million visitors annually.  This period too saw a renewed interest in living downtown.  Housing of all types, sizes and price points started to weave into the landscape.