Date of release: January 8, 2021
The City of Paducah is launching a project to study the history of the Northside neighborhood and its architecture. The project will result in the nomination of the neighborhood to the National Register of Historic Places. Achieving this listing would be beneficial to property owners since they will be able to seek state and federal tax credits for building rehabilitations.
The Northside Residential District consists of more than 450 buildings within an area generally between Park Avenue, North 10th Street, Palm Street, and North 14th Street. This study is kicking off this month with completion expected this summer.
Senior Planner Josh Sommer with the Paducah Planning Department is coordinating the project. Sommer said, “Paducah has a rich architectural heritage which has resulted in several neighborhoods being listed on the National Register of Historic Places including the Downtown Commercial District, the Lower Town Neighborhood District, and the Jefferson Street-Fountain Avenue District. The Northside neighborhood is largely a structurally intact neighborhood. It’s a neighborhood where residents choose to live their entire lives. Generations of Paducahans have seen the historical value of this neighborhood added to the City as a whole.”
To gather historic property information for the Northside neighborhood nomination, a project kick-off virtual meeting is scheduled for Tuesday, January 19 at 5:30 p.m. The meeting is open to the public and Northside residents are encouraged to participate and share information about their properties and the neighborhood.
Zoom link: https://us02web.zoom.us/s/84279108234
Meeting ID: 842 7910 8234
Passcode: 234352
Sommer also asks residents who have photos and other historic information about the neighborhood to contact him to that he can include those documents and imagery in the nomination. Sommer can be reached at jsommerpaducahky.gov or 270-444-8690.
David Taylor, a historic preservation consultant with more than forty years of experience, is assisting the Planning Department in the nomination of the Northside neighborhood. Taylor received his master’s degree from Western Kentucky University and has undertaken an array of historic preservation projects. In Kentucky alone, he has prepared more than twenty nominations to the National Register for historic districts and individual buildings and has conducted a variety of historic architectural studies in both rural and urban settings.
After reviewing the Northside neighborhood, Taylor said, “This is a remarkably intact neighborhood. The building stock ranges from Bungalows from the 1920s and earlier to Minimal Traditional, Mid-Century Modern, and Ranch-style homes. It is a well-cared-for neighborhood that certainly reflects the care that its residents take to preserve its character.”
This initiative is funded in part by a grant to the City from the Kentucky Heritage Council (KHC). The KHC oversees and advocates for the documentation and preservation of Kentucky’s breadth of historic architectural and archaeological resources across the state’s 120 counties.
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