Trolls and Ghosts of Louisville

Today Scott and I stuck around Louisville. This city, perched on the bank of the Ohio River, is very much a city of the past, with ancient structures, deep historical connections, and enduring traditions.

We spent the morning walking around downtown Louisville’s old financial district. It’s lined with looming, imposing banks and stock exchanges from the turn of the century. Most of these are now serving other purposes, such as art galleries or lofts or restaurants. They’re impressive and anomalous in the 21st century, and very much give Louisville a unique, historic vibe that you just can’t get from a hipster urban renewal project.

For lunch, we thought we would try the (slightly) celebrated Troll Pub. The name comes from the Three Billy Goats Gruff, since the pub sits under a bridge (Louisville’s Clark Bridge, which crosses the Ohio River into Indiana). The pub is in yet another of Louisville’s historic structures; this one was the headquarters of the Louisville and Nashville Railroad in the late 1800s.

Alas, the pub’s kitchen didn’t open until 1 pm (which seems like an odd time to start serving the lunch crowd), so we left and I got a stale corn dog at a gas station. But at least we were able to get this cool picture with the troll.

I addition to its cool architecture, Louisville has a strong sense of civic pride. A tangible example is the city’s Gallopalooza, which was a fundraising project whereby businesses and other groups bought and decorated fiberglass horses that were then placed around town. (This followed a popular trend adopted by a number of other towns in the early 2000s.) We encountered a handful of these horses today.

After lunch, we headed out for one final distillery tour, at Stitzel-Weller. The facility, which was constructed in 1935, was both fascinating and depressing.

When we arrived, we were struck by the picturesque, historic setting with ancient trees, rambling old rick houses, an enormous brick smoke stack, and a tidy prewar administrative building in a state of arrested decay. It’s exactly the kind of place that I want to imagine my bourbon comes from: historic, well-worn, traditional, slow-paced, and unpolished.

We were soaking up the atmosphere (quite literally in Kentucky’s summer humidity) and enjoying the tour when it became clear that this distillery has not produced whisky in over a quarter of a century. The family that owned it since its inception sold it in 1972, and it fell into the hands of a mega-corporation which shifted production to more efficient plants. The distillery’s buildings are now mainly just used to store barrels from other distilleries, and to conduct tours and tastings. It was somewhat eerie to walk through these buildings that once saw round-the-clock activity, but which now are inhabited mainly by ghosts.

Furnished with this story of commercial quietus and exposed to this setting of decline and decay, we feel properly equipped to return to the Trail of Tears in the morning.

Until then.