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Bowling Green - Warren County Bicentennial Celebration



National Register of Historic Places:
Warren County Districts

The Historic District descriptions were taken from the Landmark Association'sArchitecture
of Warren County, Kentucky 1790 - 1940, Smiths Grove, Ky: AC Publications, 1984.

College Hill District

The spine of this residential district is State Street, a principal north-south street which connects the Downtown Commercial District with the campus of Western Kentucky University on College Hill. The district also includes portions of College and Chestnut Streets parallel to State Street. The district is a highly concentrated group of nineteenth and early twentieth century residences and churches with architectural and historical significance and constitutes the largest residential neighborhood in the city maintaining its integrity and character. The presence, from the 1880's, of the three colleges on the summit of the hill -- Ogden College, Potter College and now Western Kentucky University -- stimulated the growth of this residential section between the hill and the historic core of the city. In addition to housing members of the academic community, the College Hill area has served the professional and political sectors of the community.

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Downtown Commercial District

 The Downtown Commercial District consists of a concentrated group of nineteenth and early twentieth century commercial, governmental and religious structures. It comprises the original center of Bowling Green, the original courthouse square, the principal buildings of city, county and federal governments, and the key three-block long strip of commercial structures that connects the site of the former Louisville and Nashville Railroad with Fountain Square Park. The railroad Depot was moved from the northwest corner of Main and Adams Streets in the 1920s, and the streetcar tracks that operated after 1889 along Main Street from the depot to the Morehead House hotel, at the northeast corner of State and Main Streets, has been removed, but the majority of the nineteenth century structures along this route remain.

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Magnolia Street Historic District

Smiths Grove District

Smiths Grove Historic District

 The Smiths Grove Historic District consists of three commercial buildings and the adjacent house of one of the town's leading citizens. They face the Louisville and Nashville Railroad and a lot that functions informally as the town square.

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St. Joseph's District

 Located on the western end of Main Street, across from the Louisville and Nashville Railroad tracks from the Downtown Commerce Historic District, this residential district is closely linked with Bowling Green's first industrial area consisting largelyof workers' houses built between about 1860 and about 1940. Nearby industries included the Louisville and Nashville Railroad Depot, a rock quarry, a woolen mill, a flour mill, and a planing mill. The religious and architectural focus of the nearly independent community is St. Joseph's Roman Catholic Church.

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Upper East Main Street District

 This district is a highly concentrated group of late nineteenth and early twentieth century residences located between the historic core of Bowling Green and Reservoir Hill, the site of one of the Confederate forts that ringed the city and the original location of the city's hospital. The structures are united both by their architectural significance and by the backgrounds of their owners. During the several decades before and after 1900, many local businessmen chose this area for the houses that would reflect their entrepreneurial success in the Bowling Green community. Both individually and as a group, the structures are eclectic.

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National Register || Residences || Churches || Brinton B. Davis Thematic Scheme at WKU || Districts

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The Bowling Green - Warren County, Kentucky Bicentennial Celebration Web Site
is brought to you as a public service by the
University Libraries of Western Kentucky University.

If you are interested in joining the celebration by contributing to the contents of this site,
contact Cindy.Etkin@wku.edu, Bicentennial Web Site Coordinator.

URL: http://www.wku.edu/Library/200Years/district.htm
Page last modified 28 February 1997