And, now for something completely different
This entry and a number of subsequent ones will
consist of sets or series of photo entries. This one will recapitulate
Louisville, Kentucky, and a few scenes within drive-shot of Louisville. Yes, I
know, you've already seen Louisville, but these are mostly panoramas (made from
VRs which I shot) and give a different perspective. I apologize in advance for
the limitations of today's screen technology - a panorama should be enjoyed
either as a really long and sufficiently high image or as a VR where one can
turn around within the scene. The limitations of even today's large screens
make the vertical component of panoramas somewhat challenging - which is to say
they are not very tall in order to fit within a reasonable amount of horizontal
screen real estate.
That being said, they still present a wrap-around view of a place.
That being said, they still present a wrap-around view of a place.
I found Louisville, as I previously stated, to be
a surprising place. I'd expected a low-key and somewhat down-in-the-dumps
Southern city. Perhaps the remnants of a previous Southern metropolis. What I
discovered is the remnants of a Southern metropolis which has pulled itself up
by its boot-straps and begun the job of turning itself into a modern,
sophisticated and urbane civic center. There are slightly over a million
Kentuckians and Indianans who live within the Louisville metropolitan area and
about a quarter of them live within the city of Louisville. At the turn of the
20th Century, Louisville was the 18th largest city in the country. The
industrial revolution and the boom which followed the two world wars benefitted
mostly the coastal cities and those which grew their harbors and airports.
River cities, such as Louisville, Pittsburgh, Memphis and St. Louis were less
favored, though it took St. Louis through the 60's to fall from the top twenty.
Memphis, for a brief period while flirting with consolidation of its city and
county government, rose and, as a city, remains within the top twenty
today.
Today, Louisville has to be satisfied with its status as a lower-tier city, where first tier is the top ten (in metropolitan area), second tier is the next ten, and so on. In this ranking, Seattle hangs tough with Baltimore, St. Louis and Tampa-St. Pete in the lower reaches of the second tier. It's hard to say exactly how this evolution of the modern American city has come about. Michael Porter (The Competitive Advantage of Nations) and Richard Florida (The Rise of the Creative Class) both present a set of compelling reasons and criteria which seem to describe why certain cities (and areas) have done well, both domestically and internationally. In this scenario, Louisville would have suffered from a variety of reasons, some its own failings and others the caprice of fate and evolution.
What I found, however, was that Louisville has listened to the academics, listened to its locals, and listened to those who would be enticed to move there "if but..." The if-buts are being filled in. The old downtown core, preserved much the way the Penn Quarter in the District or Pioneer Square in Seattle are, is being filled with artists, crafts-people, and new, start-up, companies. The city has built upon its horse-racing legacy and revamped and enhanced the Churchill Downs area, built a new airport, surrounded the city with an integrated road system and kept pace with public transport, including two separate free trolley lines which cover the downtown area. The area does have a long history of support for the arts and literature and has gone even further with new museums, new galleries and state-supported arts-and-science outreach programs.
The riverboat commerce days are gone, as are the tobacco and cotton farming days. Distilling is still very much a part of the local economic scene but even that is being eclipsed by more modern economic engines. Louisville today uses the medical arts and sciences and their management as a core local employment engine and has some of the leading institutions in those fields. It's trying very hard, and succeeding it seems to me, to recapture the glory and essence of its riverboat days through tourist activities and a reclaimed waterfront park area where wharves and docks used to be.
I'm always encouraged by old cities and towns which evolve along meaningful and contributory paths so they remain as much a part of our present as they did of our past. Louisville was built with grand designs so some of the infrastructure, such as street widths, began life in an enhanced manner relative to other cities. When it had money, in the early decades of the last century, the city and its business community invested in some magnificent structures and parks and bridges. Now, that investment is poised to provide a rich civic payoff. The area's growth rate has been at or near one percent for the past several decades so there's not going to be an explosion in Louisville's population. But, at a million-plus people with some significant local features, including the Ohio River and the city's peninsular-like bend into the river, Louisville will remain a competitive location for businesses and will continue to draw people from near and afar. It has not lost all of its Southern charm, but it has grown up and seemed a lot like any number of other mid-sized "Eastern" cities. It probably always was a "border" city between the Old South and the more abrupt North and it does have a very well documented role in the early explorative activities of the young United States when Western Kentucky was still unknown wilderness. Long before Lewis & Clark, Kentuckians were exploring, pushing westward and creating a liveable landscape for themselves.
The pictures below document a traipsing and round-about exploration of the city's core and some of its features, including the Ohio River.
Broadway at 2nd Street. Broadway runs parallel with Main and is an east-west street. Think of Broadway as the "new" downtown street
and Main as the "old" downtown street. In between are most of the city's institutions and facilities.
Broadway and 3rd Street. Many of the city's finest hotels and playhouses are located along Broadway. The number streets
run north-south and connect Broadway with both Main and the Ohio River.
Broadway and 4th Street. The tall buildings in the center are located on Main and are within a block of the riverfront.
This is Jefferson and 5th Street, somewhat halfway between Broadway and Main. That's the courthouse and city hall on the left
with the narrower north-south 5th Street in the center.
Louisville's Court Place on Jefferson Street between 5th and 6th Streets. Louisville was a forward-thinking urban entity at the
turn of the 19th Century and engaged the services of the Olmsted Brothers to design a set of city parks. Today that plan is
in the process of finally being fully implemented and, like the District, Louisville will have a set of urban parks linked along
broad avenues, all interspersed in the city's central commerce and business district. The broad avenues help even without
the complete realization of the Olmsted plan.
Following 6th Street toward the river, this is the intersection of 6th and Main, looking south, away from the river. Notice the
turn-of-the-century buildings with their fenestrated facades, looking for all the world like the Penn Quarter in DC or Pioneer
Square in Seattle.
This is the same intersection except the point-of-view is now facing the river, down the street in the center - 6th Street. Main runs east and
west along the right and left sides of the image. Notice how the glass building in the right-center above reflects the buildings across the
street and then look at the image before this for a non-reflected view of the same buildings, on the opposite corner, 'natch.
Midway between 4th and 6th Streets along Main Street is the Riverfront Plaza. The circular walkway in the center leads, down the
tree-lined path, to an overlook which is about 50 feet above the Riverfront Walk and the Ohio River. That's a convention center on
the left (west) side of the plaza. Humana Corporation's home office is the pink granite building at the far left of the image. Humana
is one of Louisville's largest employers and supports medical care for about 15 million individuals and families.
This is the riverfront overlook at Riverfront Plaza and looks down on the Ohio River and across to New Albany, Indiana, Downtown's
skyscrapers are situated along Main Street and converge in the area between 1st and 6th Streets. The US Highway 31 bridge, the
old steel-truss river span, is in the left-center of the view. There are two additional bridges across the Ohio at Louisville, both are
more modern concrete spans carrying Interstates 65 and 264 across the river. There are also several railroad bridges somewhat
downriver from downtown as well as locks for the passage of Ohio river barge traffic.
Down below Riverfront Plaza is the Riverfront Walk which runs for about seven miles around the bend which Kentucky makes at this
point on the Ohio. Many of downtown Louisville's east-west streets both start and end at the Ohio, providing very Pierre L'Enfant- or
Baron Haussmann-like views. These are two restored riverboat queens which are presently moored along the quay.
This is further along the Riverfront Walk near the locks, which are visible in the left-center of the image in the middle of the Ohio River.
The concrete loops are part of the circumferential highway system which surrounds and criss-crosses Louisville. Much like the Viaduct
in Seattle and the Whitehurst Freeway in Georgetown, DC, separate the cityscape from the waterfront, these freeway ribbons also
separate Louisvillian's from their beloved Ohio. With the Riverfront Plaza and the Riverfront Walk, though, the city is at least trying to
reclaim some of the pedestrian and cyclist access between the city and the river. Surprisingly enough, it works and I didn't really feel as
though I were meandering beneath a freeway, though I was. You may notice that the banks are diked for flood control.
Back in the heart of downtown, this is the 4th Street Live stage, set up in the intersection between 4th Street and Liberty and Muhammad Ali
Boulevard, this is an open air, live performance stage. The area is about midway between the downtown core's defining north-south and
east-west borders. It opened for the first time the evening I was there. This image was taken at about 6 pm with the first act expected
to begin about 7:30 pm. Later, though I didn't capture any pictures, this street and all the other intersecting streets were jammed with
people and the sounds of live rock were drifting across the canyons of downtown Louisville. Perfect for what was then a summer evening.
The sun set late when I was in Louisville. This is standing in front of the Convention Center and across from Humana's home office with
the view looking west down Main Street towards the setting sun (center of image). Already the street lights and building neon signs were
coming alive.
Because US Highway 31 is an old-fashioned highway, the streel-truss bridge, which had four travel lanes, also had a sidewalk
on either side. This image is taken at the beginning of the bridge on the Louisville side and captures the fading sunset with the
I-65 elevated freeway in the foreground. This should look hauntingly familiar to Seattleites.
A somewhat closer look at the freeway overpass and riverfront with the bulk of Louisville's skyscrapers hard-pressed together between 1st
and 6th Streets lining Main Street. Where the freeway is now there used to be wharves and docks for the river traffic. The bridge in
the right center of the river is the mainline railroad bridge across the Ohio and is immediately upriver from the locks.
This view is taken from the middle of the US Highway 31 bridge, about halfway between Kentucky and Indiana
(in a previous post I mistakenly identified the other side as Ohio, wrong-o). I do so much enjoy these old, turn-of-the-century,
steel-truss bridges. A hundred years old and with proper painting and other maintenance they will last another hundred.
Plus, even though they are strictly utilitarian, their engineering and construction now appear very art-deco and appealing.
As can be noted, Louisville has a very attractive cityscape.
Hard to picture this one, but this is a complete, 360-degree, panorama taken from the middle of the US Highway 31 bridge high above the
Ohio River. West is on the left and east is in the center with north at the far edge of the left side of the bridge and south at the far edge
of the right side of the bridge. If asked, I'll even tell how I got this image. To view the actual VR image, either click the picture above or this
link <http://homepage.mac.com/credmond/US31BridgeNight.html>.
And, getting to and from Louisville produced some pretty interesting panoramas as well. Below are three scenes
along the Mississippi River and one in West Virginia.
High on a bluff overlooking the Mississippi River along the "Great River Road," in these parts it's Missouri State Route 79. This is
immediately downriver of Hannibal, Missouri, hometown and fabled rivertown of Mark Twain.
Another bluff along MO 79, this one giving a wider view of Old Man River's expansive flood plain. Incredible how much land is
covered by the flood plain and somewhat daunting and moderately disappointing how much the Corps of Engineers has damned,
locked and otherwise messed with this great meandering river. Some day humans will learn how to actually respect this planet.
Slightly further downriver, this is the US Highway 54 bridge across the Mississippi at Louisiana, Missouri. Yes, it really is mud-colored.
Outside of and northeast of Louisville (actually by a fair number of miles) is this cemetery along US Highway 219 in the very high
Allegheny Highlands in south-central West Virginia. Within twenty miles of here is Bekeley on the west and Green Bank on the east.
That's the image inventory for now. Next up will be scenes from the Wrightsville Beach area of way-southern North Carolina's coast.
Today, Louisville has to be satisfied with its status as a lower-tier city, where first tier is the top ten (in metropolitan area), second tier is the next ten, and so on. In this ranking, Seattle hangs tough with Baltimore, St. Louis and Tampa-St. Pete in the lower reaches of the second tier. It's hard to say exactly how this evolution of the modern American city has come about. Michael Porter (The Competitive Advantage of Nations) and Richard Florida (The Rise of the Creative Class) both present a set of compelling reasons and criteria which seem to describe why certain cities (and areas) have done well, both domestically and internationally. In this scenario, Louisville would have suffered from a variety of reasons, some its own failings and others the caprice of fate and evolution.
What I found, however, was that Louisville has listened to the academics, listened to its locals, and listened to those who would be enticed to move there "if but..." The if-buts are being filled in. The old downtown core, preserved much the way the Penn Quarter in the District or Pioneer Square in Seattle are, is being filled with artists, crafts-people, and new, start-up, companies. The city has built upon its horse-racing legacy and revamped and enhanced the Churchill Downs area, built a new airport, surrounded the city with an integrated road system and kept pace with public transport, including two separate free trolley lines which cover the downtown area. The area does have a long history of support for the arts and literature and has gone even further with new museums, new galleries and state-supported arts-and-science outreach programs.
The riverboat commerce days are gone, as are the tobacco and cotton farming days. Distilling is still very much a part of the local economic scene but even that is being eclipsed by more modern economic engines. Louisville today uses the medical arts and sciences and their management as a core local employment engine and has some of the leading institutions in those fields. It's trying very hard, and succeeding it seems to me, to recapture the glory and essence of its riverboat days through tourist activities and a reclaimed waterfront park area where wharves and docks used to be.
I'm always encouraged by old cities and towns which evolve along meaningful and contributory paths so they remain as much a part of our present as they did of our past. Louisville was built with grand designs so some of the infrastructure, such as street widths, began life in an enhanced manner relative to other cities. When it had money, in the early decades of the last century, the city and its business community invested in some magnificent structures and parks and bridges. Now, that investment is poised to provide a rich civic payoff. The area's growth rate has been at or near one percent for the past several decades so there's not going to be an explosion in Louisville's population. But, at a million-plus people with some significant local features, including the Ohio River and the city's peninsular-like bend into the river, Louisville will remain a competitive location for businesses and will continue to draw people from near and afar. It has not lost all of its Southern charm, but it has grown up and seemed a lot like any number of other mid-sized "Eastern" cities. It probably always was a "border" city between the Old South and the more abrupt North and it does have a very well documented role in the early explorative activities of the young United States when Western Kentucky was still unknown wilderness. Long before Lewis & Clark, Kentuckians were exploring, pushing westward and creating a liveable landscape for themselves.
The pictures below document a traipsing and round-about exploration of the city's core and some of its features, including the Ohio River.
Broadway at 2nd Street. Broadway runs parallel with Main and is an east-west street. Think of Broadway as the "new" downtown street
and Main as the "old" downtown street. In between are most of the city's institutions and facilities.
Broadway and 3rd Street. Many of the city's finest hotels and playhouses are located along Broadway. The number streets
run north-south and connect Broadway with both Main and the Ohio River.
Broadway and 4th Street. The tall buildings in the center are located on Main and are within a block of the riverfront.
This is Jefferson and 5th Street, somewhat halfway between Broadway and Main. That's the courthouse and city hall on the left
with the narrower north-south 5th Street in the center.
Louisville's Court Place on Jefferson Street between 5th and 6th Streets. Louisville was a forward-thinking urban entity at the
turn of the 19th Century and engaged the services of the Olmsted Brothers to design a set of city parks. Today that plan is
in the process of finally being fully implemented and, like the District, Louisville will have a set of urban parks linked along
broad avenues, all interspersed in the city's central commerce and business district. The broad avenues help even without
the complete realization of the Olmsted plan.
Following 6th Street toward the river, this is the intersection of 6th and Main, looking south, away from the river. Notice the
turn-of-the-century buildings with their fenestrated facades, looking for all the world like the Penn Quarter in DC or Pioneer
Square in Seattle.
This is the same intersection except the point-of-view is now facing the river, down the street in the center - 6th Street. Main runs east and
west along the right and left sides of the image. Notice how the glass building in the right-center above reflects the buildings across the
street and then look at the image before this for a non-reflected view of the same buildings, on the opposite corner, 'natch.
Midway between 4th and 6th Streets along Main Street is the Riverfront Plaza. The circular walkway in the center leads, down the
tree-lined path, to an overlook which is about 50 feet above the Riverfront Walk and the Ohio River. That's a convention center on
the left (west) side of the plaza. Humana Corporation's home office is the pink granite building at the far left of the image. Humana
is one of Louisville's largest employers and supports medical care for about 15 million individuals and families.
This is the riverfront overlook at Riverfront Plaza and looks down on the Ohio River and across to New Albany, Indiana, Downtown's
skyscrapers are situated along Main Street and converge in the area between 1st and 6th Streets. The US Highway 31 bridge, the
old steel-truss river span, is in the left-center of the view. There are two additional bridges across the Ohio at Louisville, both are
more modern concrete spans carrying Interstates 65 and 264 across the river. There are also several railroad bridges somewhat
downriver from downtown as well as locks for the passage of Ohio river barge traffic.
Down below Riverfront Plaza is the Riverfront Walk which runs for about seven miles around the bend which Kentucky makes at this
point on the Ohio. Many of downtown Louisville's east-west streets both start and end at the Ohio, providing very Pierre L'Enfant- or
Baron Haussmann-like views. These are two restored riverboat queens which are presently moored along the quay.
This is further along the Riverfront Walk near the locks, which are visible in the left-center of the image in the middle of the Ohio River.
The concrete loops are part of the circumferential highway system which surrounds and criss-crosses Louisville. Much like the Viaduct
in Seattle and the Whitehurst Freeway in Georgetown, DC, separate the cityscape from the waterfront, these freeway ribbons also
separate Louisvillian's from their beloved Ohio. With the Riverfront Plaza and the Riverfront Walk, though, the city is at least trying to
reclaim some of the pedestrian and cyclist access between the city and the river. Surprisingly enough, it works and I didn't really feel as
though I were meandering beneath a freeway, though I was. You may notice that the banks are diked for flood control.
Back in the heart of downtown, this is the 4th Street Live stage, set up in the intersection between 4th Street and Liberty and Muhammad Ali
Boulevard, this is an open air, live performance stage. The area is about midway between the downtown core's defining north-south and
east-west borders. It opened for the first time the evening I was there. This image was taken at about 6 pm with the first act expected
to begin about 7:30 pm. Later, though I didn't capture any pictures, this street and all the other intersecting streets were jammed with
people and the sounds of live rock were drifting across the canyons of downtown Louisville. Perfect for what was then a summer evening.
The sun set late when I was in Louisville. This is standing in front of the Convention Center and across from Humana's home office with
the view looking west down Main Street towards the setting sun (center of image). Already the street lights and building neon signs were
coming alive.
Because US Highway 31 is an old-fashioned highway, the streel-truss bridge, which had four travel lanes, also had a sidewalk
on either side. This image is taken at the beginning of the bridge on the Louisville side and captures the fading sunset with the
I-65 elevated freeway in the foreground. This should look hauntingly familiar to Seattleites.
A somewhat closer look at the freeway overpass and riverfront with the bulk of Louisville's skyscrapers hard-pressed together between 1st
and 6th Streets lining Main Street. Where the freeway is now there used to be wharves and docks for the river traffic. The bridge in
the right center of the river is the mainline railroad bridge across the Ohio and is immediately upriver from the locks.
This view is taken from the middle of the US Highway 31 bridge, about halfway between Kentucky and Indiana
(in a previous post I mistakenly identified the other side as Ohio, wrong-o). I do so much enjoy these old, turn-of-the-century,
steel-truss bridges. A hundred years old and with proper painting and other maintenance they will last another hundred.
Plus, even though they are strictly utilitarian, their engineering and construction now appear very art-deco and appealing.
As can be noted, Louisville has a very attractive cityscape.
Hard to picture this one, but this is a complete, 360-degree, panorama taken from the middle of the US Highway 31 bridge high above the
Ohio River. West is on the left and east is in the center with north at the far edge of the left side of the bridge and south at the far edge
of the right side of the bridge. If asked, I'll even tell how I got this image. To view the actual VR image, either click the picture above or this
link <http://homepage.mac.com/credmond/US31BridgeNight.html>.
And, getting to and from Louisville produced some pretty interesting panoramas as well. Below are three scenes
along the Mississippi River and one in West Virginia.
High on a bluff overlooking the Mississippi River along the "Great River Road," in these parts it's Missouri State Route 79. This is
immediately downriver of Hannibal, Missouri, hometown and fabled rivertown of Mark Twain.
Another bluff along MO 79, this one giving a wider view of Old Man River's expansive flood plain. Incredible how much land is
covered by the flood plain and somewhat daunting and moderately disappointing how much the Corps of Engineers has damned,
locked and otherwise messed with this great meandering river. Some day humans will learn how to actually respect this planet.
Slightly further downriver, this is the US Highway 54 bridge across the Mississippi at Louisiana, Missouri. Yes, it really is mud-colored.
Outside of and northeast of Louisville (actually by a fair number of miles) is this cemetery along US Highway 219 in the very high
Allegheny Highlands in south-central West Virginia. Within twenty miles of here is Bekeley on the west and Green Bank on the east.
That's the image inventory for now. Next up will be scenes from the Wrightsville Beach area of way-southern North Carolina's coast.
Posted: Wed - October 6, 2004 at 10:17 PM
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Published On: Jul 04, 2005 05:41 PM
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Published On: Jul 04, 2005 05:41 PM