River Road preservation project saves one of Louisville's oldest structures

After years of discussion and planning, one of the oldest standing structures in Louisville has been saved.

The Paget House, one of the last remnants of the historic neighborhood known as The Point, has been rebuilt on the outside thanks to a recently completed $800,000 preservation project. The home was built in the late 1700s for a descendant of George and Martha Washington.

Visitors will not be able to enter the home, which is by an apartment complex just off River Road on the grounds of Waterfront Park. But tourists and Louisvillians can admire the site's beauty and journey through its history on a storyboard out front.

"When people go to Europe they want to see their ruins, their palaces, their fortresses and their castles," said Steve Wiser, a retired local architect who was heavily involved in the preservation efforts. "And that's what people want to see when they come to Louisville. They do not want to go and see these modern glass structures which have no aesthetic value, are no ornamentation or no connection to why we're Louisville."

The Paget House is in an area that once drew wealthy French who had migrated north from New Orleans, and the house was one of many mansions that stood along a strip in The Point known as Frenchman's Row. After receiving her inheritance, Margaret Wright Paget, a descendant of the Washingtons, decided to purchase a property with a spectacular view of the Ohio River.

The first part of the two-section house was believed to have been built in the 1780s or 1790s, while the section parallel to the water was constructed in 1838. The house was considered a luxurious mansion in its day, one of many that stood in the area before the neighborhood was largely destroyed in the flood of 1937.

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In November 1978, the property was added to the National Register of Historic Places. But still, the Paget House remained mostly decimated until the recent preservation, Wiser said.

He sat on the Waterfront Development Corp.'s Design Review Board for over 30 years, and worked closely with the director of Waterfront Park, the Army Corps of Engineers and River Partners LLC on Paget House.

“I helped set up the guidelines back in the 1980s that said 'this house would be restored,'” Wiser said. “Sometimes these things take longer than anticipated. In preservation, it's more of a marathon than a sprint."

Deborah Bilitski, executive director of Waterfront Park, said in the early 2000s a city plan was created that would allow for residential development along the waterfront. That plan included an agreement stating the Paget House would be preserved.

The home is now nestled between a luxury apartment complex and the Ohio River.

River Partners LLC, a real estate development company headed by Steve Poe, initially intended for the building to be turned into a restaurant or community center. But it never panned out.

“For years, Steve [Poe] and company, were pursuing different ideas and options with different prospective users of the space,” Bilitski said. “And over and over and over again, the prospective user determined it was not feasible to make viable use of the building.”

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The main obstacle facing the house is its location in the Ohio River floodplain. While this location means the property would always need to be ready to brace for high waters, it also created a potential danger for opening walls and floors to install electrical work, HVAC systems, sewer lines and determining total occupancy.

“In a historic building, the danger is what's behind the walls and what's between the floors,” said Steven Stogel, a real estate developer who is also a managing member of AEEB LLC, a financial partner with River Partners LLC.

In 2018, after exhausting all avenues of restoring Paget House into a functional and usable facility, the Army Corps of Engineers ruled the house only needed to be preserved, not rehabilitated. In the historic building world, that was significant.

“Big difference," Stogel said. "Preservation means just the exterior, rehabilitation means the exterior and interior.”

Stogel and others spent the next two years negotiating and defining every detail of the preservation with the State Historic Preservation officer.

“Every detail had to be negotiated,” Stogel said. "It was preservation with the touch of reconstruction, for instance, we were allowed to use synthetic pilasters for the columns.”

Waterfront Park put forward $200,000 for the project, while River Partners LLC shelled out an initial $475,000. It then paid an additional $125,000 in overage costs, mostly for personnel and legal time.

The project was completed in April, and by May Waterfront Park had received an official certificate of preservation from the State Historic Preservation officer. Completion of the project was a collaborative effort with A.L. Post Inc. performing the preservation work, KPFF with building stabilization efforts and Pinion Advisors with advisory help.

While River Partners LLC won’t reap any profits from this project, it retains the sole development rights on the Waterfront Park grounds until 2032.

Tim Graviss, the lead historic preservationist and a vice president at JRA Architects, may not have been involved in the project, but he believes preserving historic buildings is fundamental to understanding a community and preserving its legacies.

“Most older homes or older structures contribute to the history and the fabric of the city or the community that they're in, it's how we got to where we are today,” Graviss said.

Bilitski and Wiser believe preservation efforts such as the Paget House are not only important for the city of Louisville but also economically beneficial.

“Having a beautiful, vibrant, welcoming, diverse waterfront is a phenomenal draw to visitors to our city,” Bilitski said. She said Waterfront Park sees over 2.2 million visitors annually and that maintaining pieces of Louisville history is one thing that attracts park-goers.

Wiser also sees preservation as an economic development effort. Tourism is the third-largest industry across Kentucky, with Louisville Tourism noting nearly $3.4 billion comes visits to the state's largest city. Many of Louisville’s classic tourist attractions are housed in historic buildings across downtown.

“There's gold in those buildings, we need to save them and make them better. They bring lots of tourists into town,” Wiser said. “We want to be an authentic Louisville.”

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This article originally appeared on Louisville Courier Journal: Preservation effort saves Paget House on Louisville's River Road