Phoenix Hill

Phoenix Hill is a neighborhood of Louisville, Kentucky just east of Downtown. Its boundaries are Jefferson Street to the North, Preston Street to the West, Broadway to the South, and Baxter Avenue to the East. The Phoenix Hill neighborhood, settled before 1850 by German immigrants, is now a rich tapestry of people and a diverse mix of business, industry and residences.

It is a neighborhood of mixed but compatible uses. Much of the residential part of the neighborhood is included in the National Historic District. The neighborhood includes: a large medical district, a thriving arts district, a thriving entertainment district, social service agencies and agencies that serve the homeless, small family businesses and larger industry, single-family homes, market-rate apartment complexes and subsidized housing complexes, and new and historic churches.

The area was originally known as Preston's Enlargement, part of the land granted to Colonel William Preston in 1774. The area was annexed by Louisville in 1827, known at the time as Uptown, and was densely populated by the time of the Civil War. Some of the Bloody Monday riots occurred in Phoenix Hill near the St. Martin of Tours church.

A triangular portion of the neighborhood bounded by Beargrass Creek was not developed at all before the Civil War. Though a park was built in 1865, most of the land was not developed until the 1890s.

An important local business still continuing in 2006, in one way or another, was the Phoenix Hill Brewery, established in 1865, which also established the nearby park. Orators including William Jennings Bryan and Teddy Roosevelt spoke there before it was closed (partially because of Prohibition) in 1919.

The Phoenix Hill Neighborhood Association was organized in 1975 by local business and community representatives and later restructured to include all segments of the community – as a collateral neighborhood organization dedicated to the revitalization of the Phoenix Hill area of downtown Louisville, Kentucky. The Phoenix Hill Neighborhood Association, Inc. is considered a Charitable, 501-C3, Non-Profit Organization by the IRS.

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