Heigold Facade
About this tag
This is one of Louisville’s less-hidden oddities, but the story behind the freestanding wall is better than the sight gag. The house survived the 1937 flood and remained inhabitable, only to be demolished in the 1950s when the city expanded a municipal dump into the old riverfront neighborhood. Its elaborately carved façade was spared, moved to a park, and then moved again decades later to its present roadside perch. The carvings themselves were created by a German immigrant amid Louisville’s violent anti-immigrant climate of the 1850s, filling his home with emphatic declarations of American loyalty. Louisville destroyed the house, saved its face, and has been carrying that around ever since.