The Kenyon Building was the first skyscraper in

Louisville, Kentucky Louisville is the List of cities in Kentucky, most populous city in the Commonwealth of Kentucky, sixth-most populous city in the Southeastern United States, Southeast, and the list of United States cities by population, 27th-most-populous city ...

, United States. Standing six stories tall, the building was located on Fifth Street, between Main and Market Streets. The building was razed in 1974 and would eventually become the site of a much taller skyscraper, the

Humana Building The Humana Building, also known as the Humana Tower, is a 1985 skyscraper in downtown Louisville, Kentucky, located at 500 West Main Street and headquarters of the Humana Corporation. It was built by the Auchter Company. Description The 26-sto ...

. It was designed in the Chicago school

style Style, or styles may refer to: Film and television * ''Style'' (2001 film), a Hindi film starring Sharman Joshi, Riya Sen, Sahil Khan and Shilpi Mudgal * ''Style'' (2002 film), a Tamil drama film * ''Style'' (2004 film), a Burmese film * '' ...

with

Richardsonian Romanesque Richardsonian Romanesque is a architectural style, style of Romanesque Revival architecture named after the American architect Henry Hobson Richardson (1838–1886). The revivalism (architecture), revival style incorporates 11th- and 12th-century ...

elements by architect Mason Maury for the Kentucky Conference of The Methodist Episcopal Church. "I made all the plans for the Kenyon building with my own hands. No other architect, here or elsewhere, had anything whatever to do with them. Nother architect was consulted even. The only man who was consulted was Mr. Henning, whose enterprise erected the building. I made all the drawings and superintended the construction. When Mr. Henning proposed putting up the Kenyon, I suggested that we take a trip together, and see what they were doing in other cities. We visited several cities, New York and Chicago among them, and looked at their houses, but I made no drawings on this trip, and the building is not designed after anything we saw. It is entirely original in its plan. I suppose that the impression that I did not design the building grew out of the fact that a Chicago firm, for which my brother is the agent here, did the fire-proofing in the building, and put up a sign in the window to this effect, my brother's name appearing on this sign as agent. Then people confounded me with F.W. Maury. This fire-proofing, however, was but a small part of the cost of the house. Most of the contracts were let to Louisville people, who did the work. --Mason Maury, 1887"

References

Demolished buildings and structures in Louisville, Kentucky 1886 establishments in Kentucky 1974 disestablishments in Kentucky Chicago school architecture in Kentucky Buildings and structures demolished in 1974 {{Louisville-struct-stub