Louisville’s Tudor Revival
Tudor Revival homes can be found throughout Louisville, Kentucky. Early adopters of the style, predating the heyday years of the 1920s and 1930s, were especially prominent in Cherokee Triangle and along the Ohio River. Local architect John Bacon Hutchings was often tapped to design these grand mansions. However, Louisville’s densest concentration of Tudor Revival radiates from Bardstown Road, starting with the Bonnycastle neighborhood.
When Frederick Law Olmsted designed Cherokee Park in 1891, the surrounding privately owned land became greatly desirable. Harriet E. Bonnycastle—who had donated acreage to the park—shrewdly capitalized on this. She hired Olmsted Brothers to develop more than 100 residential plots from her holdings. Additional tracts from the “Bonnycastle Addition” later fleshed out the neighborhood. During the 1920s, these prime locations attracted many wealthy fans of the increasingly popular Tudor style.
Tudor Revival's influence was never confined strictly to the actual Tudor years, but rather became an overlapping hodgepodge of medieval, Gothic, Tudor, and other antique styles that Americans all vaguely associated with Olde England.
It is no surprise that a 1907 Louisville exhibition created a jaunty 1600s English cavalier for its mascot or that Kentucky artist Carrie Douglas Dudley Ewen imagined fairytale homes in a way that evoked the hallmarks of Tudor style. Of course, not everyone was a fan of the fad's widespread impact. Critics on both sides of the Atlantic bemoaned the seeming "Ye Olde"-ing of everything around them.
Subdivisions
As new subdivisions grew from the former county estates and rural landscapes surrounding Louisville, developers created visual and textual cues that capitalized on the public's fascination for Tudor Revival.
Cherokee Gardens featured photographs of Tudor Revival homes along with the allure of park-like living. Normandie Village promised a collection of "Old World beauties." Castleton off Eastern Parkway went even further, offering buyers a "beautiful colony of exclusive Old English homes." All around Louisville, homes built in an Olde English style were marketed to modern consumers.
Stratton Hammon
Prolific Louisville architect Stratton Hammon is rarely considered a Tudor Revivalist, with only two homes in the style attributed to him. Yet his early 1930s work often incorporated Tudor elements and inspirations.
Hammon spent nearly a decade with the firm M. J. Murphy, locally renowned for their English-style homes. The two collaborated on at least four Tudor houses on Village Drive alone. In 1929, Hammon struck out on his own but continued to use sweeping rooflines, exaggerated chimneys, mixed materials, and asymmetrical layouts.
Non-residential uses
Tudor Revival found outlets across a variety of building types and uses. Shopping centers were built in a Tudor style, as were individual businesses, stores, and restaurants. Churches and charities likewise tapped into the movement. The Kosair Charities Sam Swope Center remains a prominent Tudor Revival example along Eastern Parkway.
East Broadway saw a prominent example open in 1924, built by local jeweler and silver collector Brainard Lemon. The half-timbered Tudor structure housed one of the largest assemblages of English silver in the United States. The building remained a downtown fixture even after Lemon's collection was auctioned off in 1942, finding new life as an interior design studio and furniture gallery for Burdorf Furniture. Today the building remains intact but vacant.
