Butchertown, Louisville
Near Louisville, Kentucky
The neighborhood just east of downtown Louisville carries one of the most straightforward names in American urban geography. Butchertown grew up in the eighteen twenties when the city banned slaughterhouses from its core, pushing the trade to the east along Beargrass Creek. German immigrants, many of whom arrived as trained butchers, settled here in large numbers, opening meatpacking houses, tanneries, lard-rendering operations, and inns side by side.
The Bourbon Stockyards, established in eighteen thirty-six, anchored the trade for well over a century. The neighborhood weathered the catastrophic flood of nineteen thirty-seven and has since reinvented itself as one of Louisville's more sought-after historic districts.
