The New Albany Downtown Historic District is a national
historic district
A historic district or heritage district is a section of a city which contains older buildings considered valuable for historical or architectural reasons. In some countries or jurisdictions, historic districts receive legal protection from c ...
located at
New Albany, Indiana
New Albany is a city in Floyd County, Indiana, United States, situated along the Ohio River, opposite Louisville, Kentucky. The population was 37,841 as of the 2020 census. The city is the county seat of Floyd County. It is bounded by I-265 t ...
. The general area is W. First Street to the west, Spring St. to the north, E. Fifth Street to the east, and Main Street to the south. The local specification of the district is between East Fifth Street to West Fifth Street, Culbertson Street to the north, and the
Ohio River
The Ohio River is a long river in the United States. It is located at the boundary of the Midwestern and Southern United States, flowing southwesterly from western Pennsylvania to its mouth on the Mississippi River at the southern tip of Illino ...
to the south.
East Spring Street Historic District is immediately east of the area, and the Main Street section of the
Mansion Row Historic District starts. The area includes the
Scribner House, where the founders of New Albany lived.
[ ''Note:'' This includes and Accompanying photographs.] It is also the focal area of the
Harvest Homecoming Festival every October.
Architectural styles vary, including
Beaux-Arts,
Chicago Commercial, Federal,
Greek Revival
The Greek Revival was an architectural movement which began in the middle of the 18th century but which particularly flourished in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, predominantly in northern Europe and the United States and Canada, but ...
,
Italianate
The Italianate style was a distinct 19th-century phase in the history of Classical architecture. Like Palladianism and Neoclassicism, the Italianate style drew its inspiration from the models and architectural vocabulary of 16th-century Italian R ...
,
Neoclassical, and
Renaissance Revival
Renaissance Revival architecture (sometimes referred to as "Neo-Renaissance") is a group of 19th century architectural revival styles which were neither Greek Revival nor Gothic Revival but which instead drew inspiration from a wide range o ...
. Prominent buildings in the district include:
*Elsby Building (1916, Neoclassical)
*Firestone Building (1937, Art
Moderne)
*New Albany Carnegie Library (1902): Now the
Carnegie Center for Art and History
*Sears Automotive (Art Deco)
*
Town Clock Church (1852,
Greek Revival
The Greek Revival was an architectural movement which began in the middle of the 18th century but which particularly flourished in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, predominantly in northern Europe and the United States and Canada, but ...
): Originally the Second Presbyterian Church and served the
Underground Railroad
The Underground Railroad was a network of clandestine routes and safe houses established in the United States during the early- to mid-19th century. It was used by enslaved African Americans primarily to escape into free states and Canada. T ...
, it is now the Second Baptist Church.
*
Woolworth Building (1910, Chicago Commercial): Site of the chain's first
luncheonette
A lunch counter (also known as a luncheonette) is, in the US, a small restaurant, similar to a diner, where the patron sits on a stool on one side of the counter and the server or person preparing the food serves from the opposite side of the c ...
.
[Barksdale, David C. & Sekula, Robyn Davis (2005)]
''New Albany in Vintage Postcards'', p. 2
It was listed on the
National Register of Historic Places
The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is the United States federal government's official list of districts, sites, buildings, structures and objects deemed worthy of preservation for their historical significance or "great artistic v ...
in 1999.
Gallery
File:Carnegie 47150.jpg, Carnegie Center for Art and History
File:Scribner House in New Albany.jpg, Scribner House
File:Town Clock Church.jpg, Town Clock Church
See also
*
References
* http://www.newalbanypreservation.com/uploads/File/designguidelines/NAguides-Downtown.pdf
* https://web.archive.org/web/20120206235321/http://www.countyhistory.com/fchs/tour.html
Historic districts in New Albany, Indiana
F. W. Woolworth Company buildings and structures
National Register of Historic Places in Floyd County, Indiana
Populated places on the Underground Railroad
Federal architecture in Indiana
Italianate architecture in Indiana
Historic districts on the National Register of Historic Places in Indiana
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