Death of Lexington Mall

The long goodbye of Lexington Mall continues. I recently snapped these photographs of the bulldozers laying waste to the place. If you look really close, you can see a Regis Hairstylists sign in an open space that was once a mall corridor.


Preservationist and clinger-to-the-past though I am, I hold no grudges against the church that's about to be built here. The grudge I hold, rather, is against the executives who sat in an office in some other faraway city and let this property rot for so many years. There was nothing stopping them from enacting any number of proactive efforts to do something with the Mall. Instead, they ignored it and let it slowly dilapidate, giving a major eyesore and embarrassment to Lexington for years.

Fudging the Data

Two summers ago, I happened across a Wikipedia article about an alleged ghost town in Kentucky what go by name of Fudge.

I don't remember exactly what I was doing that afternoon, but I was probably tussling with stuff relating to my multiple pastimes of theatre, painting, music, writing, eating, and drinking, and hastily whipped up a quickie UnK post basically relaying the info that this Wikipedia page about this ghost town existed. And then wandered off in search of adventure.

Now, two years later, it has come to my attention that - shockeroo - Wikipedia just might be a load of baloney. I know for a fact they're consistently wrong about a number of subjects (including myself!) and I've heard some rumblings on the web that this Fudge article is a fabrication from start to finish.

Unfortunately, these rumblings come from places like the dreaded Topix, which is one of those typical internet message boards where angry people bicker with one another endlessly about nothing. Still, if the people in the Hickman area are all saying they've never ever heard of this "Fudge" place, it makes me wonder.

The usda.gov link that the Wikipedia page provides as a source for the Fudge article contains, in fact, no mention of a Fudge, KY. And some Flaming Lips fans have stated that, contrary to the article, there is no such thing as a video for the song "Chrome Plated Suicide".

Does anyone else have any evidence for this fabled Fudge other than this increasingly suspect Wikipedia article?

Genny's Diner

One from our Whitewashed Windows and Vacant Stores blog:


Although I rarely ate there, Genny's Diner was a Louisville tradition and I will miss it. Their deep-fried "frickled" pickles were a unique local item which you don't see every day.

Owner Frank Faris, after years of battling with the city over his property next door, has been put out of business. Part of it is his own fault: he steadfastly refused to make ordered upkeep improvements to the home, despite court orders to do so. But I think Faris got a raw deal in the end: when he announced his intention to bulldoze the house to make more parking spaces for his diner, a group of concerned citizens got together and colluded to hurriedly designate the dump a "historic home", specifically so he couldn't do what he wanted to with his own property.

And when he still refused to cooperate, a judge ordered him to sell the house. And when he couldn't find a buyer, the judge actually ordered him to give it away for free. Can a judge really do that? Well, this one did, and I didn't hear many people squawking about it.

The way the whole thing turned out for Faris leaves a very unsavory taste in my mouth. It's true that his own behavior is why it all ended in drama and Faris' arrest, but I nevertheless sympathize with Faris for trying to conduct himself as if he was still living in an era when people were allowed to do what they wanted to with their own personal property. Those days are gone, and with their passing we've all lost something bigger than fried pickles.

A gourmet ice cream place called the Comfy Cow is slated to take over the Genny's Diner location. Ironically, they're going to bulldoze it and start over with a new building of their own.

Abandoned Houses in Woodford County

Took an unexpected side-road tangent somewhere in Woodford County today and spotted this abandoned house on, if I recall correctly, McCowan's Ferry Road. Didn't have time to get out and scrutinize it closely but it looks wonderful.





Bonus rural decay: saw another one on the same road, but only got to snap this one quick photograph from the moving car, because some impatient truck was right on my behind:

Hobbs Chapel Facade

Like the Heigold Facade, the Hobbs Chapel facade is the remaining front entrance to a building that no longer exists. The original church was built on this site in Anchorage in 1876, and destroyed by a fire in 1954.


Note the Tudor Roses on the front entry gateposts.



Somewhere along the way, someone decided to rescue the abandoned remains of the church and rehabilitate it. The area is now a public park, and a charmingly spooky one at that.


It would appear that the base of this birdbath is actually a piece of debris salvaged from the church.



The sign says "Hobbs Chapel and Cemetery", and I'd always wondered where the heck the graves are. I just did a Google search, and lo and behold, the cemetery is in the woods further back behind the park area, about 300 yards. Guess now I gotta go back and check that out too.

Mine 18

McCreary County's Mine 18 was operated by the Stearns Coal and Lumber Company from 1937 to 1962, in the now-defunct town of Blue Heron. The community originally stood on the banks of the Big South Fork of the Cumberland River.

For many years, Blue Heron remained a "ghost town" as its few remaining buildings quickly fell into disrepair and collapsed. But in the 1980s, a strange project to rebuild Blue Heron as closely as possible was enacted, and now visitors can travel to what amounts to an enormous full-scale museum replica of a Kentucky coal town as it looked during its heyday. Most of the buildings are only empty shells meant to be viewed from the exterior, and are referred to on the National Park Service website as "ghost buildings".

Unfortunately, you can't go exploring deep into the mines, which to me would be a lot more interesting than seeing a fake coal tipple. Someone should open some sort of underground resort in a Kentucky mine; if not this one, then perhaps the abandoned mines in Boonesboro.


You can see photos of Blue Heron the way it was back in the day by clicking here, and also note the photo gallery of the nearby town of No Business, KY with plenty of nice abandoned buildings.

Tower of Vodka

I love graffiti art, but I don't love it when it ruins people's private property, such as the toy-tag throwdowns of sociopathic goofballs like "Kamel" and crew. And unfortunately, it usually does.

However, when graffiti is applied to semi-abandoned structures that are already ugly eyesores, hey, why not? And I'm pretty certain that this corroded water tower off Louisville's Logan Street is as abandoned as the decrepit factory beneath it.


This "Vodka" guy, whoever he may be, went to considerable trouble just to paint his nickname on this tower. You can gauge the relative size of a human to everything else in the picture by observing the ladder that goes up, and the railing that circles the tower - clearly, this nut had to stand on something in order to finish such a large mural. Can you imagine standing on something on a narrow walkway that's hundreds of feet up in the air?

Imagine what someone with such determinism could accomplish if he had some goals in life other than to spray-paint his name all over stuff.

Abandoned Buildings of Henry County

There's a million of 'em, and you're gonna love 'em.

Abandoned Anchorage Church Update

Has it really been almost two years since we examined this abandoned church in Anchorage? It's abandoned no more; as promised by a commenter on that post, it's being totally renovated and it's looking great now.

Abandoned Cave City Tourist Attractions

A fantastic collection of photos of Cave City's numerous defunct tourist traps has turned up in, of all places, an interior decorating blog from Nashville.

Kristie Barnett's Making Arrangements blog recently took a break from its usual style, design and feng shui topics to show some vacation photos taken while passing through Cave City. It's sad how many of the great places there have closed their doors, and it's up to us to do something about it. Like Aldo the Apache and his men in the film Inglourious Basterds, we need to organize a determined squad of entrepreneurs to go down there on a mission to help restore Cave City's beautifully tacky tourist trade. Who's with me?

Free Victorian House!

One from our blog Revelation Awaits An Appointed Time:


There's no catch - the house next door to Genny's Diner on Frankfort Avenue in Louisville is FREE to a good home.

As reported on Louisville Mojo, a judge has ordered Frank Faris to give away this great old Victorian mansion to anyone who wants to take it off his hands, since he has himself been unable or unwilling to make court-mandated renovations to the historic home.


Faris purchased the property for $100,000 years ago with the intent to demolish it, but the city declared it a historic building before he got around to that. Now he's forbidden to tear it down and saddled with the cost of maintaining it to code.

So yeah, I suppose there is a catch, and that was it. Anyone who takes the free building will find themselves with the same expensive task as Faris: trying to bring this crumbling, near-collapse edifice back to life.

Genny's Diner Owner Must Save or Sell House

Back in the summer, I took some pictures of the great old run-down building next to Genny's Diner on Frankfort Avenue in Louisville, and wondered why this beautiful old Victorian mansion was being allowed to rot and decay. Now a judge has ordered owner Frank Faris to either sell it, save it from collapse, or go to jail.

Read the whole story on my Louisville Mojo column!

The Ouerbacker House

The long-abandoned Ouerbacker House, on the corner of 17th Street and Jefferson Street in Louisville, has been falling apart for years now. It's very strange, since it would seem to have been a prime piece of real estate at one time.

According to Broken Sidewalk, Metro Louisville took control of this property from a foreclosed tax business in 2005, but the property became even more abandoned during the city's stewardship, experiencing advanced decay, vandalism, and fires.



Recently there was some fear that the house would be disassembled and shipped elsewhere, but fortunately, it's not to be. There's a new Ouerbacker House Restoration Foundation that's reportedly working on saving the place and making it inhabitable again for future generations.

Abandoned Railroad Bridge Returns

The long-abandoned Big Four Railroad Bridge has been slated to be repurposed as a pedestrian walkway/bikeway, making travel between Louisville and Indiana fun.


When I first moved to Louisville several years ago, everyone was saying the pedestrian bridge in Butchertown was coming "any day now". After a couple of years I gave up on it, so it pleases me to see that they're finally making some progress on the construction of the on-ramp that will enable feet, bikes, and wheelchairs to make the trek across the Ohio River.

However, the trajectory of the on-ramp is such a wide one that simply getting to the bridge looks almost as long a journey as crossing the bridge itself. I was rather hoping for an elevator or something.

Abandoned Swimming Pool

This rectangular concrete pit, found in a densely wooded area somewhere between Louisville's Calvary Cemetery and St. Agnes Parish was apparently once a swimming pool. But why? For whom?



These days, it seems to be functioning strictly as a landfill/trash dump. I wonder what urban-archaeology cool treasures are fermenting at the bottom...

The Morrissey Building

This abandoned building, The Morrissey, once consisted of Bosler's Fireproof Garage, Kentucky Typewriter, and some other spot that looks to have been a deli at one time. It's located at 429 S. 3rd Street in downtown Louisville and is rumored to be earmarked for destruction in the near future.





I saw the door open yesterday and hoped that someone was in there that I could talk to about the possibility of leasing the place, and thus save it from being demolished. No one was around, alas.









The Falls City Theatre Equipment Co. building, also empty, is right next door. See more images of both buildings on Deatonstreet's flickr.









Taken from the rooftop: