Henderson history: One local institution was reborn in 1972 while another was coming down

The venerable Kingdon Hotel on Second Street was condemned 50 years ago, about the same time ground was broken for the current Henderson County Family YMCA.

It took roughly a year for those actions to come to fruition. And later in 1973 – after the site on Second Street had been leveled – the Kingdon Hotel came floating down the Ohio River. So to speak, that is. More about that in a moment.

Let’s begin with the long struggle to build a new YMCA, which stretched over decades, longer even than the battle to complete the building it replaced.

For 66 years the YMCA was housed in a three-story building at Third and Main streets, which provided generations of youngsters opportunities to play basketball, swim, bowl and learn how to dance. "To many, it's the place where they first heard about fair play, sportsmanship and morals," Judy Jenkins wrote in a 1974 Gleaner article.

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The cornerstone of the former YMCA building is preserved and it is dated 1904. Although 1907 is usually given as the date of the building's completion, its construction was actually an on-going process between 1906 and 1911, judging from newspaper coverage.

Bill Hieb was in his 38th year of service at the Y and was director when ground was broken. “This is the highlight of those years,” he said in The Gleaner of May 19, 1972.

Footings had already been poured and concrete block walls were beginning to go up, that story says. City and county governments had provided crucial help in building what is now Klutey Park Plaza for access to the property. The county constructed the grade and drainage, while the city provided the rock base.

Fundraising had been ongoing for years and picked up steam after Carlton Klutey donated the five-acre building site worth $25,000, according to The Gleaner of Aug. 7, 1970. But necessary funds were still nearly $80,000 short in the spring of 1973. Forest Thomas, chairman of the fundraising committee, reminded the crowd at the fundraising “we all need to catch up on our pledges.”

“We’ve been talking about this for 30 years,” said Dorris Keach of Keach Construction Co., the general contractor. “Now, if you’ll allow me, I’d like to let about 40 construction workers get back on the job and build this building.”

The problem of collecting pledges was not the only obstacle to erecting the building. The original amount budgeted for the building was $710,000 – but the bids came in considerably higher than the architect estimates, according to The Gleaner of Aug. 18, 1971. They ranged from a low of $999,000 to $1.01 million.

Architect Davie Crawley, in meeting with the YMCA board, said he would revise the building plans at no additional cost. The board was grateful, according to The Gleaner of Aug. 24.

The Gleaner of Feb. 26, 1972, reported Keach was the apparent low bidder at $725,462 after the building’s scope had been whittled down. Anaconda Aluminum Co. donated storm doors, door facings and windows, which Crawley estimated were worth an estimated $15,000.

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The Gleaner of April 20, 1972, reported that a contract with Keach had been signed for a 32,885-square-foot building with regulation-size swimming pool and gym. “Plans call for handball courts, kitchen, clubroom, game rooms, handicraft areas, and other facilities….”

Every financial institution in town banded together to loan the YMCA board the money needed to start work – even though all the pledges had not yet been collected.

The new YMCA on Klutey Park Plaza opened its doors to the public at the end of April 1973, holding a week-long open house to boost membership, according to The Gleaner of April 27, although the YMCA’s website says the facility opened in June of that year.

The demolition of the Kingdon Hotel also occurred in the spring of 1973.

The large building was located on the site of what is now The Perch pocket park. It was erected in 1890-91 by Louis P. and Charles F. Kleiderer and originally was called the Hotel Henderson. The Kleiderers fell on hard financial times and sold the hotel to Charles F. King of Corydon, and the hotel was renamed in his honor.

For at least three decades it was Henderson’s finest hotel – until the Soaper Hotel was built in 1924. But age began to take its toll.

The Gleaner of May 18, 1972, reported City Codes Administrator Donald Wood had issued a condemnation order. He listed 40 violations of the building code and called it “one of the worst buildings in the downtown area.”

The owner of the building, Transylvania Land Corp., had a survey of the building done by Donan Engineering Inc. of Madisonville.

It confirmed Wood’s findings. “The third and fourth floors, according to Donan, are in advanced stages of deterioration, and parts of the second floor have begun to sag,” The Gleaner reported.

Wood said he would consider “any reasonable request concerning the condemnation, including a possible razing of only the upper two floors, if the bottom two floors could be brought into conformance with the code.”

The building was mostly vacant by that time, housing only a few offices.

The following day, May 19, The Gleaner carried an editorial praising Wood for the job he had been doing. He had already inspected 50 buildings, another of which had also been condemned, and the owners of two others had issued assurances they would raze their defective buildings.

The Transylvania Land Corp. appealed Wood’s order in the summer of 1972 and by February the building’s future appeared doomed after the owner missed a deadline.

Demolition began in mid-March 1973 and by the fall of 1974 the site was being converted into a parking lot.

The summer of 1973, however, saw a sort of resurrection of the Kingdon Hotel.

Henderson's entry in 1973’s first of the flatboat races was called the Red Banks Queen. It was built with three-inch-thick planks of oak and poplar that came from the recently demolished Kingdon Hotel.

100 YEARS AGO

Henderson’s buggy manufacturers were whistling past the graveyard a century ago, trying to appear as though they weren’t afraid of what was quickly becoming inevitable.

“Henderson buggy companies are jubilant over what they believe is a revival of big business in the buggy world and already business has increased to an extent justifying increased payrolls,” reported The Gleaner of May 21, 1922.

Cheap automobiles flooding the market for cars, combined with a postwar recession, “is having a tendency to bring the buggy back into its own.

“Two local companies, which have constituted Henderson’s biggest industry for years, are now employing 100 men each…. One salesman last week reported the sale of 97 buggies and the same salesman the week preceding sold 68 buggies.”

50 YEARS AGO

Plans to build what is now U.S. 41 had local businessmen in a lather because they feared the new highway would bypass Henderson, according to The Gleaner of May 15, 1947.

U.S. 41-Alternate was the original U.S. 41 and one of the main reasons the highway was initially built along that route was that Webster County had considerable political influence at the time. By 1947, however, it was clear that what is now U.S. 41 would be a more efficient route to Madisonville.

Henderson residents were so concerned about being bypassed that a group of them went to Frankfort to meet with State Highway Commissioner Steve Watkins. Watkins agreed to make another study of the route to see whether the two highways could join just south of Henderson.

The highway project had been a dream since at least 1930, when the Great Depression stomped it out, but didn’t open until late 1952.

25 YEARS AGO

The plug was pulled on Riverside Downs racetrack but initially the water moccasins sunning themselves on floating boards were unconcerned, according to The Gleaner of May 13, 1997.

Once water began draining from the facility, which had been flooded more than two months, they had to find themselves a new home, however.

Judge-executive Sandy Watkins conceded he had no authority to order the work done, but said it was a matter of public health and safety. Ownership of the track had been tied up in bankruptcy court for years and it wasn’t clear who the owner was.

For years the track had been drained by large pumps, but with the electricity turned off – and some power lines lying in the water – it didn’t make sense to try to turn the power back on. Instead, they hunted up Bill Breedlove, an old employee of the track, who showed them where the original gravity-fed drain was located.

County officials dug down to find the drainpipe, uncapped it, and dug a ditch about 80 feet long so water could flow unimpeded to the Ohio River.

Watkins said it would probably take days for the track to fully drain.

Readers of The Gleaner can reach Frank Boyett at YesNews42@yahoo.com or on Twitter at @BoyettFrank.

This article originally appeared on Henderson Gleaner: Henderson history: One local institution was reborn in 1972 while another was coming down