Gerth: Failed city leadership killed Hogan’s Fountain Pavilion and other historic buildings
An earlier version of this column misstated the amount of deferred maintenance in Louisville's park system. The amount in 2019 was $177 million.
Wednesday, they tore down the tepee at Hogan’s Fountain.
In the near future – probably October − it will be the old police headquarters. Then, if the city doesn’t get any sufficient bids to redo the old Fiscal Court Building, the 85-year-old art deco office tower could be next.
There’s the old Baptist Hospital in the Highlands that was last used for government offices. It has sat empty for years, falling deeper and deeper into disrepair. There’s a proposal now to tear down everything on the campus except for the boiler room and start from scratch.
We’ve shut down Algonquin Swimming Pool for the summer – in this, the hottest year ever recorded on this planet – because the repairs it needed were too extensive to be done in the spring or the fall or to be spaced out over a couple of non-swimming seasons.
What’s next?
This is all the result of two decades of Louisville Metro Government doing nothing to make sure our old buildings last.
In budgets it’s called “deferred maintenance,” and it means we don’t care enough to do what is needed to keep our old buildings, parks and other properties operating properly.
There are churches in Europe that are more than 900 years old. The tepee isn’t going to make it to 60.
Police Headquarters won’t live to see its 68th birthday.
I’m not certain what it is about losing the old tepee-shaped pavilion at Hogan’s Fountain in Cherokee Park that makes me sad.
Maybe it’s the fact that I spent time there as a kid – sometimes with my dad, who liked to take drives through Cherokee Park on weekends. Or maybe that the Our Mother of Sorrow’s class of 1979 sometimes went there on end-of-year field trips, where we nearly maimed one another by spinning the nearby playground merry-go-round faster and faster until the riders were thrown bouncing across the ground, all scraped and bloody.
Fun times.
Perhaps it’s because it was dedicated just two-and-a-half weeks after ol' Dr. Barnes dedicated me with a swat on the rump at the old St. Joseph’s Infirmary − and it makes me wonder if and when my own deferred maintenance will catch up to me.
Who knows?
But the fact is because we’ve refused to do what was needed to keep up these old structures, we’re now ripping them down without any thought of their history. And that’s too bad.
In Louisville, we like to pat ourselves on the back about the old Victorian homes in Old Louisville and the old cast iron buildings along Main Street, but the fact is we don’t really care that much about our old buildings. Never have.
If we did, we never would have torn down block after block – some 4,000 buildings – during urban renewal, between 1959 and 1974. Among the buildings that came down then was the old Columbia Building, the city’s first skyscraper at Fourth and Main.
If we really cared about old buildings, we’d not be trying to help the Omni Hotel tear down the old Odd Fellows Building even though the company won’t say how they plan to use the property and why the building must go – except to say they want to build an entertainment complex there.
Pardon us if we don’t trust them too awful much after they promised to integrate the old Falls City Theatre Equipment Co. sign into their existing building and then did so by hanging it in an alley, over a door that no one uses.
It seems the city uses its historic preservation rules that make it harder and more expensive for people to own property in historic districts. It does so with rules about the types of repairs people can make and what materials they can use.
But, when it comes to big things like tearing down historic structures, the city doesn’t really care. Especially when those buildings are owned by the city itself.
Don’t blame Mayor Craig Greenberg – this is the fault of the Louisville Metro Council and past mayors who couldn’t find money to pay for upkeep of buildings and parks, or who just didn’t prioritize it. Greenberg just inherited the problem when he became mayor in January.
A 2019 study found that there was $177 million in deferred maintenance in Metro Parks – think the Algonquin pool and the flattened Hogan’s Fountain pavilion. That’s almost certainly more now, when you consider inflation and the continuing decline of property that has languished for two decades.
When I asked Greenberg’s office which city-owned buildings had deferred maintenance issues, spokesman Kevin Trager said in an email, “My understanding is that a majority of metro government buildings are in need of deferred maintenance. You can try filing an open records request to get more details.”
The Metro Council, in this year’s budget, included $5 million for deferred maintenance at parks and another $3 million to renovate pools at Algonquin and Camp Taylor parks.
It’s not nearly enough.
Who knows if taking care of the tepee or the brick and marble police headquarters like we should have would have saved them the wrecking ball – sometimes buildings just grow obsolete – but if we’re not going to do the minimum to repair them, they don’t stand a chance.
Hopefully, someone will come through with a plan to turn the old Fiscal Court building into a hotel or an office building or something to save it, much as River City Entertainment Group LLC is doing to save the old Louisville Gardens – left by the city to rot – by turning it into a production studio with sets and sound stages.
All we know is it's too late for the tepee.
Joseph Gerth can be reached at 502-582-4702 or by email at jgerth@courierjournal.com.
This article originally appeared on Louisville Courier Journal: Loss of Hogan's Fountain the result of Louisville leadership failures
