The following narrative describes the Bardstown Road/Baxter Avenue Corridor District and shall be considered in applying the Corridor Review Overlay guidelines which are applicable to this district:
The Bardstown Road/Baxter Avenue Corridor forms the backbone of the Highlands National Register District, which spans between Broadway and Douglass Boulevard, and then extends south to Kaelin Avenue. The Corridor is an important shopping and business area closely linked with high quality residential areas. The character of the Corridor changes from north to south with the older properties on the on the north. The character also reflects an evolution from a mixed commercial/residential strip to a predominately commercial corridor, with many buildings remaining intact from each period of development in both commercial and residential styles.
As a result of this evolutionary development, most buildings are constructed at or near the front and side property lines to establish a continuous street wall or building frontage along the sidewalk, although some existing residential buildings retain a front yard setback. Individual or connecting buildings along a block face form a continuous building frontage or street wall and are characterized by an overall two and a half story mass that is divided into distinct segments or store fronts. Buildings generally have well-defined storefronts with individual entrances from the sidewalk facing the Corridor, windows for display of retail goods or services, signage that is designed, proportioned, and appropriately located, and other pedestrian-oriented amenities that create an attractive and animated sidewalk environment.
Parking is provided on the street or at the rear of sites with alley access. A pattern of parking encroachment into residential neighborhoods abutting the Corridor has been developing in recent years, and surface parking adjacent to the public sidewalk occurs where there have been contemporary intrusions of fast food franchises, a shopping mall and a large grocery store.
The Corridor begins near the intersection of Baxter Avenue, Cherokee Road, and East Broadway, which is near the location of the Cave Hill Cemetery entrance and also forms the northwest corner of the Cherokee Triangle Historic District. The west side of the intersection contains several intrusions to the district. The commercial character of this northern end of Baxter Avenue was mostly developed in the 1880’s, but there are scattered examples of early vernacular and Italianate residential and commercial styles as well as major turn-of-the century Classical Revival and eclectic commercial buildings.
Throughout the Corridor, many vernacular Victorian residential structures remain intact, varying in material, style, and decorative treatments. The architectural phenomenon of residences adapted for commercial use by building a one-story addition to the front of the residence is first seen in the Corridor at the northern section of Baxter Avenue. These additions extend the building fronts to zero setbacks and are of a consistent style using red pressed brick with parapet walls containing a minimum number of decorative elements, central entrances flanked by display windows, and transom lights.
The full block of storefronts with zero setbacks forms a pronounced early twentieth-century commercial pattern between Alta and Bonnycastle. At Speed Avenue, the residential character of the neighborhoods adjacent to the Corridor predominates. The Corridor is also intersected by Eastern Parkway, part of the Olmsted-designed park system, which is characterized by a wide, tree-lined verge that establishes a deep setback along the parkway for the adjacent commercial developments that face the Corridor. Several intrusions of fast food and automobile-oriented service facilities occur between Highland Avenue and Grinstead Drive and at all four corners of Bardstown Road and Grinstead Drive. Similar intrusions of parking lot-oriented fast food and retail between Beechwood and Longest Avenue and, intermittently, between Wrocklage Avenue and Kaelin Avenue, create the largest breaks in the historic character of the corridor. However, the concentration of fine examples of utilitarian, commercial, and residential architecture, as well as storefront additions in the vernacular style discussed earlier, remains intact along the remainder of the Corridor.
(Lou. Metro Ord. No. 265-2007, approved 11-26-2007)