The National Park Service has announced that eight Kentucky sites have recently been listed in the National Register of Historic Places, including a Jewish cemetery, wholesale grocery warehouse, and Victorian home school for girls.
The sites were approved for nomination during a May 17 meeting of the Kentucky Historic Preservation Review Board, which is charged with evaluating National Register nominations from Kentucky prior to their submission to the park service. The Kentucky Heritage Council/State Historic Preservation Office (KHC) administers the National Register program in Kentucky and provides administrative support to the review board.
Listed sites were:
•Rock Cabin Camp near Cave City, an early motel and motor court consisting of a home/office building and nine limestone cabins, constructed in 1928;
•Middlesboro Jewish Cemetery, established in 1904 for the burial of Jewish residents in the Kentucky/Tennessee/West Virginia region;
•E.O. Robinson House in Highland Heights, a Shingle-style home designed by architect G.C. Burroughs and constructed in 1909 for one of eastern Kentucky’s premier timber industrialists;
•Montgomery-Sandidge House near Greensburg, a hybrid of dogtrot/saddlebag log frame construction dating to the early 19th century and modernized in the 1940s;
•Kentucky Home School for Girls in Louisville, a late Victorian estate home constructed at the end of the 19th century that served as a private school from 1948 through the 1970s;
•Kellogg and Company Wholesale Grocery Warehouse in Richmond, a two-story building dating to 1906 constructed of fire-resistant timber within masonry walls, a method known as mill construction;
•Westminster Presbyterian Church in Paducah, a late Gothic Revival building constructed in 1951 just as the town flooded with new employees hired to work at the Gaseous Diffusion Plant;
•Craig-Peak House near Georgetown, a Greek Revival home constructed between 1820-1860.
An additional 13 Kentucky sites have been listed in the National Register since January, including the Columbia Commercial District; Bold House in Foster; Doyle Country Club in Dayton; Bush Warehouse in Winchester; Haury Motor Company and Garage, and Calvary Evangelical Lutheran Church, in Louisville; Scearce-Roush House in Simpsonville; J.D. Dodson House in Bowling Green; Old Taylor Distillery Historic District; Waveland (boundary increase/name change) near Nicholasville; Rowan County Courthouse (boundary increase); Paducah City Hall; and the Peabody-Fordson Historic District in Clay County.
The National Register is the nation’s official list of historic and archaeological resources deemed worthy of preservation. Kentucky has the fourth-highest number of listings among states, with more than 3,400. Listing can be applied to buildings, objects, structures, districts and archaeological sites, and proposed sites must be significant in architecture, engineering, American history or culture.
Owners of National Register properties may qualify for state and/or federal tax credits for rehabilitation of these properties to standards set forth by the Secretary of the Interior, as certified by the Kentucky Heritage Council, or by making a charitable contribution of a preservation easement. National Register status does not affect property ownership rights, but does provide a measure of protection against adverse impacts from federally funded projects.
An agency of the Kentucky Tourism, Arts and Heritage Cabinet, the Kentucky Heritage Council is the state historic preservation office, responsible for the identification, protection and preservation of prehistoric resources and historic buildings, sites and cultural resources throughout the Commonwealth, in partnership with other state and federal agencies, local communities and interested citizens.
(story provided by Kentucky Heritage Council)
