Audubon Farm, Scott County, Kentucky I've been living in the past lately (more so than usual) as I delve into the creation of the "super highway system" in Kentucky. This necessitates a great deal of browsing time in historic newspapers, where I am prone to distraction by an interesting story or…

Bourbon Instead of Bread: The Possible Rebirth of the Whiteside Bakery, Louisville, Kentucky A sprawling Mission-style bakery complex, once lauded as "the finest west of New York," appears poised for restoration and rebirth. The Whiteside Baking Company, which opened in 1908, has been purchased by…

The WPA Builds: Concord School, Elliott County, Kentucky The start of the school year still inspires me, though I am sadly not heading off to the halls of academia myself. I like the edging of summer into fall, and the promise of cooler weather energizes my mental faculties - usually resulting in…

Demolition Files: W.B. Erringer House, 1105 Main Street, Paris, Kentucky A surprise demolition last Thursday in the Downtown Paris Historic District provides credence to some tired truths.*  The circa 1875 W. B. Erringer House, demolished at the behest of its owner, the Catholic Diocese of…

The Busy Month of July 2025: Lake Huron Cottages and Kentucky Farms During July, which slipped away just last week, I reveled in the cool temperatures of Northern Michigan and sagged and sweated in the sultry 95-degree days in Clinton County, Kentucky. I took many photographs in each location, but…

Vernacular House on Mulberry Street, Lebanon, Kentucky Between 1890 and 1895, a one-story frame house was built on Mulberry Street in Lebanon, Kentucky. It wasn't very large, maybe three to four rooms, but had a projecting, canted gable on the west side of the facade, and a small porch. It was the…

The Branham-Evans House, Midway, Kentucky Years ago, I fell in love with what I call the central cross gable, which looks like a peaked, triangular shaped projection on the long side of a side gable house. My great-great-great grandfather's house, built in 1844, sports this feature (I like to call…

Movie Magic: The Crump Theater, Columbus, Indiana While Columbus, Indiana deserves its reputation as "the Athens of the Prairie" for its collection of mid-century modern architecture, my recent stop there found me captivated by a historic building of a different sort, one with roots extending back…

The Summer of the Volunteer Tomato In February, I ordered my tomato seeds, for I determined that this was the year for me to start all of my own tomato plants! I would save money and grow delicious heirloom varieties destined for canning jars or tomato sauce. On April 1, assembly of the grow…

Lick Spring United Baptist Church, Magoffin County, Kentucky The drone of the cicadas (Brood 14 is in full voice after 17 years of dormancy!) and the sudden escalation in temperatures makes me think of hazy August days, winding down a rural Kentucky road. I came across the Lick Spring United…

Notes from the Garden: Lots of Rain and Little Sun It's been an odd spring. Actually, odd is becoming (has ready become?) the new normal. We've been very wet, and lest you think I am relying on my handwritten notes recounting rainfall amounts (scribbled on the calendar on our fridge), greater…

John H. Glass and his Mill, Jessamine County, Kentucky One of the fun facts I recall learning in elementary school - after memorizing all 120 counties, which has actually been beneficial in my career - is that Kentucky has, after Alaska, more navigable miles of water than any other state in the…

The E.B. Miles House, Bloomfield, Kentucky One of the things I love most about the study of vernacular architecture is how the same form or plan of a house can be built over long spans of time, so that a house built in 1831 in Nelson County, Kentucky, can look quite similar to a house built in…

The Griffin Taylor Latta House, Ludlow, Kentucky Mother's Day was yesterday, and I celebrated by working almost all day in the garden. This circa 1914 holiday is a curious oddity to me, as it was most stridently not celebrated in my childhood home. When other children worked on Mother's Day cards…

Help Needed with Mystery Photos, Winchester, Kentucky I love taking photographs of historic buildings. I do not love labeling my digital images. There are 112 folders in my "Kentucky Counties" file, containing 63,932 jpegs, which take up an estimated 183 gigabytes on my hard drive. I am well aware…

A Good Brick Cottage of Three Rooms, Louisville, Kentucky I am incontrovertibly incapable of research without distractions. If I am searching through historic newspapers on a specific hunt, I never fail to scan the whole page, eyes roving for any interesting tidbit. This is, of course, not without…

A Venetian Gothic Gem in Louisville, Kentucky It's a busy Monday, and amid the bustle of work and life, I don't know when I will be able to write a blog post. But I have determined to steal 15 minutes and share this lovely historic house, in hopes that it brings some joy to your day. Built in 1901…

Wrecking Ball Watch: Covington Brothers Wholesale Grocery Building, Paducah, Kentucky The circa 1894 Covington Brothers Wholesale Grocery Building in Paducah, Kentucky, at the corner of Jefferson and North Third Streets, is facing a likely emergency demolition. Is there anyone in Paducah who could…

April Showers Bring… Disastrous Floods in Kentucky Spring weather in Kentucky is always unpredictable, but when the meteorologists started predicting rainfall amounts last week, my breath caught. On the second of April, I was up most of the night monitoring the tornado warnings. The rain started…

Today's gripe about the vagueness of secondary sources: "With the penetration of the railroad in 1903..." and that's it. No mention of what RR line, or where the tracks ran, just that it arrived in 1903.

Mary Catherine Williams Duncan and Her Double Houses, Paris, Kentucky I celebrate women's history almost every day, first and foremost as a woman and a historian. The notion of containing the recognition of women and their role in our lives and communities to just one month seems stifling and…

Purple Martins: Birds of a Feather Flock Together Author’s Note: The authors and content creators of Gardens to Gables typically attempt to avoid confrontational topics and as such this post may “ruffle the feathers” of ornithologists, entomologists, archaeologists, and Baptists alike. That being…

The Arcade Barber Shop and the Magic of Google Streetview While sifting through historic images for a project in Louisville, Kentucky this morning, I came across this fabulous mid-20th century photograph of the Arcade Barbershop on Taylor Boulevard.  The caption for the image didn't provide a…

The First Jonquil (or Daffodil) to Bloom in 2025 I knew it was coming - and I've never seen a more wonderful spot of color amidst last fall's leaves. The first of the Narcissus Mando, a 1959 Guy Wilson hybrid, is blooming in one of the front porch garden beds. Very soon, a riot of color shall…

Tulips - it's a one-sided love affair - but it doesn't stop me from coveting their bright colors.. #kentuckygarden #gardening wp.me/p527lo-2ZF

The Winter that Never Ends and Spring Daydreams As some folks may know (especially if you follow Gardens to Gables on Instagram and are privy to my frequent venting about the weather), the snow in January and February - and that snow's refusal to melt and disappear - has resulted in my children…

There's nothing like driving or walking around and discovering an intriguing historic house. #LouisvilleKY #kentuckyarchitecture wp.me/p527lo-1Rx

So happy to find the Frog and Toad Bot here ❤️

Pope Francis rebuked his distortion of Catholic teaching. I'm still waiting for his Yale Law School professors to remind him of Marbury v. Madison. newrepublic.com/article/1914... via @newrepublic.com

Historic Main Street - a great commercial building like this one in Irvine, Kentucky, makes me smile. #kentuckyarchitecture #historicmainstreet wp.me/p527lo-3ao

It's snowing again and school is closed. Here's hoping the rain moves in soon. #kentuckyweather #kentuckyarchitecture

Movie Magic: The Hilltop Theater, Louisville, Kentucky There's a hill in the Clifton neighborhood in Louisville, a long slow climb up from Beargrass Creek in Butchertown - a fitting site for a splendid movie theater  at the dawn of a new century. The Hilltop Theater, a two-story edifice clad in…

Spot on from @chrismurphyct.bsky.social

The Method Behind the Madness: Solving a House Mystery, Lexington, Kentucky In the spring of 2018, I shared a photo from the Lafayette Studios Collection on the Gardens to Gables Facebook page. The black and white image shows a two-story, brick, Italianate style house from the late 19th century.…

The J.W.B. Lee Duplex, Carlisle, Kentucky One of the most common questions I field from readers is "How do you decide what buildings to photograph?" It's probably easier to answer that question by flipping it around, so that I can contemplate what I don't stop to capture with my camera. That list…

I deleted Twitter. That felt good.

Circa 1913 L&N passenger depot, Greensburg, Kentucky. #kentuckyarchitecture

A Mission Style Mystery in Bowling Green, Kentucky A stroll down the 500 block of Chestnut Street in Bowling Green, Kentucky quickly brings to mind the Sesame Street song: “One of these things is not like the other; One of these things doesn’t belong.” Situated in a block occupied by remnant…

Kentucky Places: Holland, Allen County, Kentucky

Kentucky Places: Holland, Allen County, Kentucky