John E. Findling’s Louisville traces the city from its 1778 founding as an Ohio River portage point through a century of steady growth. Postcards capture the 1880s Southern Exposition and the rise of the Louisville and Nashville Railroad, which linked the city to markets across the North and South.
By 1900 Louisville ranked as the nation’s 18th-largest city, with a downtown of grand office buildings and hotels. More than 200 vintage postcards document its parks, designed in the 1890s by the Olmsted brothers, alongside the institutions and prosperity that shaped the river city.
Published 2009
15 pages
$7.99