Author: thekaintuckeean

I’ve been asked about a lot about my #DemolitionWatch posts. Isn’t it best that some of these buildings be demolished? There’s not much value to the little run-down structure, so why save it? Do you favor saving every building? Are you opposed to progress?

Well, at least the #DemolitionWatch posts seem to get people’s attention. And maybe they’ll start a conversation. I hope that the posts don’t simply become a case of the boy that cried wolf. There are significant properties that can and should be saved on #DemolitionWatch. Examples include the Peoples Bank (here, here, and here) and the Sanders House which was regrettably demolished in the waning days of May 2015.

Other properties won’t be saved. But saving every shotgun really isn’t the goal, nor is it possible.

The Janitor at Transylvania

There are a few goals. First, I hope that readers begin to recognize the significance of the once prevalent shotgun as an example of an architectural style. Second, the places being demolished were once the places where real Kentuckians lived or worked. Historical accounts of Lexington are sure to note the Gideon Shryock-designed Morrison Hall on the campus of Transylvania University, but those same accounts are equally likely to ignore the story of the janitor who worked at Transylvania.* And third, to recognize that every place matters.

(As is often the case, a peculiar thought or search term online uncovers and begets amazing information. Apparently, the janitor of Transylvania’s Medical Hall did make the history books. His name was Absalom Driver. A future post indeed!)

William Murtagh, the first keeper of the National Register of Historic Places once said that “the past [belongs] to anyone who is aware of it, and it grows by being shared.” While sharing tangible reminders of our past remains the first choice because the physical connection to our past is irreplaceable, knowledge of our past and the sharing of that knowledge is also critical.

Without that knowledge, a community might lose its bearings. It may forget its true past and its legacy.

736 North Limestone

Case in point: 736 N. Limestone. The circa 1905 duplex was the home of laborers. The property, under demolition, is part of the LuigART rebirth of this once blighted area. The project intends to “create beautiful, historically-sensitive structures, spaces, streetscapes, and community that reflect and augment the character of the community.” It will offer important live/work space for area residents. I mentioned this project in a prior post on Rediscovering Eddie Street. The ‘demolition permit’ will allow for positive change.

According to the 1911 city directory, 736 N. Limestone was the home of Joseph and Hattie Fish. According to the directory, he was a laborer. The couple had moved by the following year’s directory around the corner to 122 Eddie Street. In the 1920 census, a Joseph Fish lived on Eddie Street alone. And even the Lexington Leader’s ‘colored notes’ are silent about Mr. and Mrs. Fish.

The 1921 directory finds Benjamin and Lena Bibbs residing at 736 N. Limestone. Like Joe Fish, Ben Bibbs was a laborer. But unlike Mr. Fish, Benjamin Bibbs was a “well-known citizen” when he died in 1931. The Leader reported that services for him were held at the Consolidated Baptist Church and that he was buried in a family plot at the Greenwood cemetery.

The Notable Kentucky African American Database recognizes Mr. Bibbs with the following notation: “Benjamin Bibbs (b.1880) was a shoe shiner at N Y Hat Cleaners (1931 directory). According to his WWI draft registration card, Bibbs had been a tinner at State University on Limestone [now University of Kentucky], and he and Lena Bibbs lived at 167 E. 7th Street.” It would seem that The Bibbs family lived in various homes in the neighborhood and the family name frequented the Leader’s ‘colored notes.’

Every place has a story.

Built ca. 1920, 453 Speigle Street is yet another Lexington shotgun that recently faced her demise. A permit of demolition was issued on May 26, 2015. Although the PVA lists a private owner for the property, the demolition permit favored LFUCG Code Enforcement.

News of this demolition was the first I had heard of this little little area known as Speigle Heights. As it turns out, I’ve walked through a small portion of it before unwittingly though I must not have taken note.

Speigle Heights was created from the subdivision of two parcels: Adcock Addition and Adcock Second Addition. The first included 108 lots that included parts of Jane, Robinson, Ferguson and Douglass streets; its plat was filed on July15,1912. I couldn’t find information on Adcock Second, though 453 Speigle was located in this latter addition. The area west of the railroad tracks is only accessible via Robertson Street.

The first reference to Speigle Heights in the local history index was specific to 453: Henry Berry passed away at his home here in January 1935. Mr. Berry, a member of the Main Street Baptist Church, was buried in the African Cemetery #2. According to the 1930 census, Mr. Berry had been a janitor at Transylvania College.

The references to Speigle Heights, however, multiply through the years beginning in the 1990s, but most are crime-related. In July 1998, the Lexington Herald-Leader published an article entitled ‘Invisible Heights’ in which it was noted how “odd this week [it was] to see the name of Speigle Heights in the Sunday edition of The New York Times Magazine. . . . The Heights is a tiny, nearly invisible neighborhood in Lexington, a scattering of little houses on Speigle Hill that overlooks the railroad tracks below.”

The New York Times? Yessir. The NYT piece concerned Gayl Jones who, born in 1949, “grew up in a cramped, dilapidated house with no indoor toilet in Speigle Heights, one of Lexington’s more turbulent black neighborhoods.” Jones would become an accomplished author, but the NYT article concerned the gruesome events related to her mother’s passing from cancer, accusations of medical experimentation, Jones’ husband’s suicide following a violent 1998 confrontation with Lexington police seeking to execute on a 1983 warrant from Michigan at the couple’s north Lexington home. The full NYT account can be accessed here.

I drove through parts of Speigle Heights yesterday and discovered an area containing a mix of older and more recently constructed lower income housing with a small community park. But clearly, there must have been something more to this neighborhood in the days that Mr. Berry lived in Speigle Heights.

It was a place of pride to own a home in the predominately-African American Speigle Heights. As noted in the Herald-Leader in 2006, “Back in the day, some black folk in Lexington thought of the black people who lived in Speigle Hill as saditty (pronounced sa-dit-ty). Stuck up. Snobbish. But that was because the families who lived on the eight streets that constitute the Speigle Hill community off Versailles Road back then owned their homes, and they weren’t the type to wait for things to be handed to them. The men by and large worked for the city in some capacity, including as police officers and firefighters.”