page_title: History of Louisville, Kentucky
section_title: Post-Reconstruction
hierarchical_section_title: History of Louisville, Kentucky / City development (1803–1900) / Post-Reconstruction
caption_attribution_description: Columbia-building, Louisville, Kentucky
context_page_description: The geology of the Ohio River, with a but a single series of rapids halfway in its length from the confluence of the Monongahela and Allegheny rivers to its union with the Mississippi, made it inevitable that a town would grow on the site. Louisville, Kentucky was chartered in the late 18th century. From its early days on the frontier, it quickly grew to be a major trading and distribution center in the mid 19th century, important industrial city in the early 20th, declined in the mid 20th century, before revitalizing in the late 20th century as a culturally-focused mid-sized American city.
  The history of Louisville, Kentucky spans a bit over two centuries since the latter part of the 18th century. Prior to arrival of Europeans, the region was depopulated from the Beaver Wars of the 17th century, and no permanent Native American settlements existed in the area. It was used as hunting grounds by northern Shawnee and southern Cherokee. The area's geography and location on the Ohio River attracted people from the earliest times. The city is located at the Falls of the Ohio River, then a part of Kentucky County, Virginia.
context_section_description: James Callahan and other area businessmen organized the Louisville, Harrods Creek and Westport Railway in 1870 and continued construction through the Long Depression before failing in 1879. Although the LHC&W never reached beyond Harrods Creek, its service was continued by the L&N and contributed to growth in the city's eastern suburbs, particularly after the LRC purchased and electrified the track between Zorn Avenue and Prospect in 1904.
  The first Kentucky Derby was held on May 17, 1875, at the Louisville Jockey Club track (later renamed to Churchill Downs). The Derby was originally shepherded by Meriwether Lewis Clark, Jr., the grandson of William Clark of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, and grandnephew of the city's founder George Rogers Clark. Ten thousand spectators were present at the first Derby to watch Aristides win the race.
  On February 2, 1876, professional baseball launched the National League, and the Louisville Grays were a charter member. While the Grays were a relatively short-lived team, playing for only two years, they began a much longer lasting relationship between the city and baseball. In 1883, John "Bud" Hillerich made his first baseball bat from white ash in his father's wood shop. The first bat was produced for Pete "The Gladiator" Browning of the Louisville Eclipse (minor league team). The bats eventually become known by the popular name, Louisville Slugger, and the local company Hillerich & Bradsby rapidly became one of the largest manufacturers of baseball bats and other sporting equipment in the world. Today, Hillerich & Bradsby manufactures over one million wooden bats per year, accounting for about two of three wooden bats sold worldwide.
  In 1877 the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary relocated to Louisville from Greenville, South Carolina, where it had been founded in 1859. Its new campus, at Fourth and Broadway downtown, was underwritten by a group of Louisville business leaders, including the Norton family, eager to add the promising graduate-professional school to the city's resources. It grew quickly, attracting students from all parts of the nation, and by the early 20th century it was the second largest accredited seminary in the United States. It relocated to its present 100-acre (0.40 km²) campus on Lexington Road in 1926.
  In February 1882, Oscar Wilde lectured in the city and on that occasion met Emma Speed Keats, the niece of his poetical hero (John Keats), who had settled in the city. She was the daughter of Keats' brother George Keats and she later sent Wilde an autograph manuscript by Keats of his poem 'Sonnet on Blue'.
  On August 1, 1883, U.S. President Chester A. Arthur opened the first annual Southern Exposition, a series of World's Fairs that would run for five consecutive years adjacent to Central Park in what is now Old Louisville. Highlighted at the show was the largest to-date installation of incandescent light bulbs, having been recently invented by Thomas Edison, a former resident.
  Downtown Louisville began a modernization period in the 1890s, with Louisville's second skyscraper, the Columbia Building, opening on January 1, 1890. The following year, famous landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted was commissioned to design Louisville's system of parks (most notably, Cherokee, Iroquois and Shawnee Parks) connected by tree-lined parkways. Passenger train service arrived in the city on September 7, 1891, with the completion of the Union Station train hub. The first train arrived at 7:30 am. Louisville's Union Station was then recognized as the largest train station in the South.
  Interrupting these developments, on March 27, 1890, a major tornado measuring F4 on the Fujita scale visited Louisville. The "whirling tiger of the air" carved a path from the Parkland neighborhood all the way to Crescent Hill, destroying 766 buildings ($2​¹⁄₂ million worth of property) and killing an estimated 74 to 120 people. At least 55 of those deaths occurred when the Falls City Hall collapsed. This is one of the highest death tolls due to a single building collapse from a tornado in U
caption: The Columbia Building was the tallest building in Kentucky for a decade
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