The Highlands Historic District [†] is located in the eastern section of Louisville. The area is southeast of the Phoenix Hill Historic District (pending National Register) and southwest of Cave Hill Cemetery (National Register, 1982), the Cherokee Triangle Historic District (.National Register, 1976), and Cherokee Park (.National Register, 1982) = The district is largely residential, including all or part of the Highland Neighborhood, Tyler Park Neighborhood, Deer Park Neighborhood, Bonnycastle Neighborhood and Highlands- Douglass Neighborhood The district also includes the Bardstown Road/Baxter Avenue commercial corridor from Lexington Road on the north to Douglass Blvd0 on the south, the boundaries have been drawn to follow natural neighborhood boundaries, where possible, existing National Register districts and properties, and specific residential developments 0 Various zoning classifications fall with this district, with R-6 residential predominant. Higher density residential and C-2 commercial are also found in the Highlands District though less frequently., There are approximately 3000 contributing structures and approximately 200 non-contributing structures within the district.
It is one of Louisville's earliest suburban developments, with most of the streets laid out by 1880 and scattered residences dating from the 1850s. The residential housing stock of the Highland neighborhood is largely Italianate and Victorian working-class shotgun style residences with several clusters of grand middle- to upperclass residences of the same period. South of the Highlands neighborhood is the Tyler Park Neighborhood. The northern end of this neighborhood dates from the late nineteenth century with turn-of-the-century vernacular, Bungalows and Craftsman style residences located nearer Eastern Parkway Castlewood, a large development within Tyler Park, dates from the 1920s with large Craftsman and Revival style residences laid out in a picturesque setting. The section of the Deer Park Neighborhood included in this nomination is of late nineteenth and early twentieth century vintage housing, both small shotgun and larger Victorian residences. The Bonnycastle Neighborhood, on the opposite side of Bardstown Road from Deer Park, contains a wide variety of residential architecture. Sherwood Avenue, the northern-most of the streets in Bonnycastle, contains the older mix of small and large scale late Victorian and early twentiety century dwellings. As devleopment spread southwardly the Bungalow, Craftsman, American Foursquare and Revival styles of the ^Os combine to create an architecturally diverse and significant neighborhood. The Highlands-Douglass Neighborhood continues the 1910s and 1920s development of the Bonnycastle Neighborhood and contains the best examples in the city of the Revival styles on both modest and grand scales 0 Both demolition and non^contri^- buting structures ,ar^ minimal within the residential sections of the district. Scattered throughoui%ie district are typical supporting structures to residential enclaves.
The Highlands Historic District reflects:, in a microcosm, the national trends in architecture, suburbanization, transporatation, and city planning oyer a period of 150. years. Its major significance is its architecture, displaying residential and commercial styles from Victorian to Wrightian, frivolous to utilitarian, massiye to modest. The early nineteenth, century residences which remain, further contribute to the sense of time and place in the development of the Highlands. The Highlands Historic District is Louisyille^s: largest intact example of later-nineteenth, and early twentieth, century suburbanization.
