Boland-Maloney Lumber

Boland-Maloney Lumber has closed its Main Street location. You can still find them at 4010 Collins Lane, however.

Duke's Appliance Center

This building at 931 E. Main Street was most recently Duke's Appliance Center, and before that it was the Butcherblock Gallery and before that it was the Cinderblock Gallery, which I ran for almost a year, having taken it over from Katie Beach who took it over from Scott Scarboro. Before that, I think it was a dry cleaners at some point way back in the day.

Boss Petey Auto Mart

This place on Mellwood Avenue in Butchertown has been closed and fenced off for quite awhile now. Did a Google search on 'em and found this business directory which lists them as having been a DBA of the U.S. Customs Service and, in turn, the Department of Homeland Security. Interesting, to say the least.

Electric Blue Print & Supply

Electric Blue Print & Supply has occupied this building on Story Avenue for as long as I've lived in Louisville. From the looks of the structure, it may have been some sort of fancy furniture store or department store way back in the day.

A couple years ago, they announced a big unexpected "going out of business" sale and hurriedly ditched everything in the place. I gleefully loaded up on cheap art supplies and fixtures but hated to see them go - at the time, I was running the Cinderblock Gallery just a few doors down and relied heavily on Electric Blue for all my art needs.

Shortly after going out of business, though, they promptly reappeared at a new location on Frankfort Avenue. This confused me. And still does. And their old location remains on the market but still sits empty to this day. Someone's paintings have been displayed in the windows for a long time now (Hey people, that's really not good for the paintings).

DeHart Paint and Varnish Co.

This old paint factory at 900 E. Main, right along the line where Butchertown starts to become Downtown Louisville, was built in 1880 and is sitting totally empty. At one time there had been big plans for $250,000 condos here but apparently the economy's kiboshed that project, because the realtor's signs are back up on the property now.

I remember the artist Bill Fischer telling me that Jackson Pollock had ordered a pallet-load of specially-formulated paint from a Louisville paint factory just before he died, and that Bill was only too happy to take the stuff off their hands. I'm wondering if this is the paint factory in question, because I was watching the documentary Who the #$&% Is Jackson Pollock? the other day on Sundance, and noticed some DeHart paint cans in footage of his studio.

Autobahn Motors

Formerly located at the corner of Spring and Mellwood (you can still see them open on Google Maps Street View).

Berley's

Always admired this empty building at 947 Franklin Street in Butchertown. Was once Berley's plumbing company.

Club Premier

I never went there, but I always loved the eye-poppingly orange diamond-patterned facade of Club Premier on Story Avenue in beautiful Butchertown. Prior to this, it had a good run as lesbian bar called The Alternative. Originally, this was the historic Do Drop Inn way back in the day.

What will go here next, amid the grimy industrial edifices and the rotten odor of burning snouts and hooves wafting from the friendly neighborhood Swift plant? We shall see. Maybe I'll finally open my long-projected Voraxium house of sequined subversion here and put on our own hillbilly-flavored Grand Guignol shows.