Central Park, Louisville
Encyclopedia
Louisville, Kentucky
Louisville is the largest city in the U.S. state of Kentucky, and the county seat of Jefferson County. Since 2003, the city's borders have been coterminous with those of the county because of a city-county merger. The city's population at the 2010 census was 741,096...
. Located in the Old Louisville
Old Louisville
Old Louisville is a historic district and neighborhood in central Louisville, Kentucky, USA. It is the third largest such district in the United States, and the largest preservation district featuring almost entirely Victorian architecture...
neighborhood, it was first developed for public use in the 1870s and referred to as "DuPont Square" since it was at that time part of the Du Pont family
Du Pont family
The Du Pont family is an American family descended from Pierre Samuel du Pont de Nemours . The son of a Paris watchmaker and a member of a Burgundian noble family, he and his sons, Victor Marie du Pont and Eleuthère Irénée du Pont, emigrated to the United States in 1800 and used the resources of...
estate.
During the Southern Exposition
Southern Exposition
The Southern Exposition was a five-year series of World's Fairs held in the city of Louisville, Kentucky from 1883 to 1887 in what is now Louisville's Old Louisville neighborhood. The exposition, held for 100 days each year on immediately south of Central Park, which is now the St....
in 1883, 13 of the park's 17 acres (68,796.6 m²) were temporarily "roofed in" and used to showcase Thomas Edison
Thomas Edison
Thomas Alva Edison was an American inventor and businessman. He developed many devices that greatly influenced life around the world, including the phonograph, the motion picture camera, and a long-lasting, practical electric light bulb. In addition, he created the world’s first industrial...
's light bulb, one of the first large-scale public displays of the light bulb in the world. In 1885 the park was unroofed, and was instead used as an outdoor exposition, with an Edison designed electric trolley line transporting visitors around the park to see such sites as a roller coaster, bicycle trails, and an art museum surrounded by a lake.
By 1904 the entire Du Pont family had moved to Wilmington, Delaware
Wilmington, Delaware
Wilmington is the largest city in the state of Delaware, United States, and is located at the confluence of the Christina River and Brandywine Creek, near where the Christina flows into the Delaware River. It is the county seat of New Castle County and one of the major cities in the Delaware Valley...
, so they sold the park to the city of Louisville for $297,500. The city enlisted famed architect Frederick Law Olmsted
Frederick Law Olmsted
Frederick Law Olmsted was an American journalist, social critic, public administrator, and landscape designer. He is popularly considered to be the father of American landscape architecture, although many scholars have bestowed that title upon Andrew Jackson Downing...
, the man who designed New York City's Central Park and had already designed an entire park and parkway system for the city of Louisville, to plot the new park. Olmsted had a large open air shelter with a colonnade built on top of the hill where the art museum had once stood, along with a wading pool and athletic fields on the side. The original walking trails were kept in place.
William Shakespeare
William Shakespeare was an English poet and playwright, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's national poet and the "Bard of Avon"...
's works, which had been held in the park since 1960. Since 1988 the annual event has been called the Kentucky Shakespeare Festival
Kentucky Shakespeare Festival
'Kentucky Shakespeare', commonly called Shakespeare in the Park, is a cultural event which features free Shakespeare performances every summer in Central Park in Old Louisville . Begun as the Carriage House Players in 1949, it is the oldest free professional and independently-operating Shakespeare...
, and is still free to the public.
In 2004 the park celebrated its centennial.
See also
- History of Louisville, KentuckyHistory of Louisville, KentuckyThe history of Louisville, Kentucky spans hundreds of years, with thousands of years of human habitation. The area's geography and location on the Ohio River attracted people from the earliest times. The city is located at the Falls of the Ohio River...
- List of attractions and events in Louisville, Kentucky
- List of parks in Louisville, Kentucky
- St. James Court Art ShowSt. James Court Art ShowThe St. James Court Art Show, colloquially called the St. James Art Fair, or just St. James, is a popular free public outdoor annual arts and crafts show held since 1957 in the Old Louisville neighborhood of Louisville, Kentucky, in the St. James-Belgravia Historic District...
— situated mostly to the south of the park