A new Hidden Location and an answer to the last one

At some point I need to get back to writing real blog entries instead of these little games. But, I am enjoying them so that may not happen for a while. First, a new picture, Hidden Location #12, for Marty to locate. Wait, I meant for everyone to take a stab at locating before Marty figures it out. Go.



Marty's answer for Hidden Location #11 is correct. That is the 1200 block of Hull Street looking northeast. This is the Irish Hill neighborhood just off Baxter Avenue near what is now called Lexington Road. The subdivision known as Irish Hill was laid out in two parts, the earlier one closer to Lexington Road, then known as Hamilton Avenue, was the old Valentine Schneikert property and developed by Adolph Hull, who probably named Hull Street. The Schneikert mansion still exists up on a hill behind some condos which front at 1234 Lexington Road. Very few people ever see the Schneikert mansion, which now has been converted to apartments and has a Pine Street address. I cannot locate a good picture of that home. Schneikert was a Louisville brickmaker in the post-Civil War era. His home was built prior to 1884.

[WRITER/EDITOR'S NOTE: Before some more informed soul than I points it out to me, someone like Dr. Tom Owen, I must confess I've eliminated a reference in the last sentence of the above paragraph to Mr. Schneikert's home being built of wood, as opposed to brick. When I wrote that earlier - the reference is now gone - I felt I was wrong. So, as part of my evening drive I went and found the house and found (most of it) to be constructed of brick, as is befitting the home of a Louisville brick merchant. Thanks for allowing me to clear that up].

Two people mentioned the old brick mansion at 1212 Hull Street, pictured below, believed to have been built around 1868. That was the home of Nicholas Finzer, a Louisville tobacco merchant - The Five Brothers Tobacco Company - as well as a member of the old Louisville School Board. A school once stood on E. Broadway between Shelby and Clay streets on the south side named for Mr. Finzer and Finzer Street runs behind the old school proeprty over to Smoketown. I've put a picture of the school below that of his mansion. It is now a parking lot.

These two homes in Irish Hill aren't that far apart. I can't determine where the proeprty division may have been based on the current street grid. But the balance of the Schneikert property was re-subdivided by an Act of the General Assembly on March 24, 1884. This later section became the property of the Payne family and Payne Street obviously is named for them. This subdivision extended over to the now-abandoned Eastern Cemetery where my Schlenk relatives are buried, including my great-grandmother Loraine Augusta Schlenk Lee Hall, and her parents, Emil and Minnie Schlenk.

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Nicholas Finzer Mansion, 1212 Hull Street


Nicholas Finzer School, formerly at 740 E. Broadway