The beginnings of the East End—originally called Audubon—are shrouded in myth. Annexing that area to the city of Henderson was a more troublesome tale.
I’ve always been told the reason it was called Audubon was because John James Audubon built the first house there. Trying to nail down that nugget of information has led me to conclude it’s highly doubtful.
The earliest mentions of that myth I’ve seen are two stories in The Gleaner of Sept. 24, 1950, which featured articles about the history of the Audubon community. According to those stories, Audubon built a two-story house at the northeast corner of Loeb and Shelby streets in 1815, which is now a vacant lot. A fire about 1902 made that house unusable. Audubon also supposedly built a smaller house at the rear of his lot.
John Coleman salvaged portions of those structures and used them to construct the existing house at 1511 Loeb St.
“The sills were of hickory logs, put together with square nails, and the roofing was of heavy poplar boards, three inches wide and an inch thick,” Coleman said. “I used that for decking in the house I built.
“It was a hard job to tear down the old building, much harder than I thought it would be.”
Coleman also uncovered a quantity of brick while grading off the corner in 1917, sloping the ground to give it a better appearance. “They were part of the foundation of the old Audubon home, the one in which he lived,” Coleman said. “That foundation must have been three or four feet deep, and very thick. I saved some of those bricks and used them in other work around the house. They were very hard.”
Now that I’ve told you a charming story … let me poke it full of holes. Audubon arrived in Henderson in mid-1810 and left in mid-1819.
According to deeds at the Henderson County Clerk’s Office, between 1812 and 1816 John James Audubon bought more than 21 acres of land, much of it in the downtown area, although he also bought an acre at Water and 11th streets and 10 acres at the south end of the town’s original plat.
A plaque placed a century ago at the northeast corner of Main and Second streets says that’s where his store and house were located. He bought two lots there Dec. 22, 1812.
Of course, that approximately 21 acres doesn’t include the land that is now Audubon Mill Park, which he and his partners gained control of via a 99-year lease from the city on March 16, 1816.
I checked with multiple sources, such as the Henderson County Public Library, Conner Humphrey, curator of the Audubon State Park Museum, and Richard Rhodes’ excellent biography of Audubon. Except for the 1950 stories—135 years after he supposedly built a house there—I’ve found no evidence the famed naturalist and artist ever owned land in what is now the East End.
The earliest mention I’ve seen of the name Audubon being applied to a portion of the East End is an Oct. 26, 1888, article from the Louisville Courier-Journal, which noted 181 lots had been sold by the Henderson Land Improvement Co. for a total of $18,400. The company called the development “Audubon.”
The Henderson City Council met in a special meeting Nov. 27, 1888, and unanimously approved a request from the land improvement company to extend water lines through the development to the new furniture factory then under construction. That was the first mention of the Audubon community in the city council’s minutes.
The council supplied water there provided the lines were reasonably close to the furniture factory; the Henderson Land Improvement Co. guaranteed the area would generate at least $450 annually in water revenue the following three years.
The Henderson Land Improvement Co. was incorporated Nov. 7, 1889. W.W. Shelby was president and other investors were H.F. Pringle, John O’Byrne, John D. Elliott, A.S. Winstead, Edward Atkinson and R.C. Blackwell. I’ll wager many of you have driven on East End streets named after some of those men.
The unincorporated community of Audubon continued to grow—as did the need for city services—prompting a petition for annexation on May 7, 1901, according to city council minutes. That petition, signed by 75 people, was referred to a special committee, which issued a favorable report May 21. The city council instructed the city engineer to draw up a plat of the proposed addition and the city attorney to draft an ordinance to enact annexation.
On June 4, 1901, a counter-petition was presented to the council by the Henderson Cotton Mills, the Audubon Pharmacy and 89 citizens of Audubon. They maintained the petition to annex had been signed by up to 30 people who were not property owners in Audubon and that some others were minors.
The original petition, they maintained, did not represent the “wishes of the largest property owners,” many of which were industries or owned substantial truck gardens, orchards, and berry patches.
Nevertheless, on June 18, 1901, the city council heard both sides before passing first reading of the annexation ordinance 9-3. But when the ordinance came up for final reading on July 9, the council evenly split, requiring the mayor to break the tie. The annexation motion failed.
On July 20, 1902, nine members of the 12-member city council pledged they would take no further action to annex because they wanted to lure the Coquillard Wagon Works plant here.
On July 19,1904, the city—with a new council in place—passed final reading of an ordinance annexing Audubon 10 to 2, along with areas on the south side that extended the municipal boundary toward Sand Lane. A long list of property owners—including industries and railroads—promptly sued in two different lawsuits.
It was a tangle. The two suits were consolidated, and lengthy depositions were taken. The area’s top attorneys were hired for both sides.
In its answer, the city maintained the community of Audubon had a population of about 2,500 and was “as densely populated as the city of Henderson itself.
“It is in fact a part and parcel of the city of Henderson, except that the invisible municipal boundary does not include it within its territorial limits.”
Furthermore, the city said the children of Audubon needed a school and that the area would benefit from city police and fire protection, which would lower insurance costs for businesses there. It also promised it would eventually extend streetlights, gas lines and sewer systems to the area.
Circuit Judge J.W. Henson ruled for the city, according to the Twice-a-Week Gleaner of Feb. 28, 1905, largely because most affected landowners approved. That story said the annexations added to the city about 4,000 people and between 375 and 450 acres of land, which held a half-dozen industries. The largest were the Henderson Cotton Mills, the Coquillard Wagon Works, the Marstall Furniture Co, and the Kleymeyer & Klutey Brick and Tile Co.
The headline in The Gleaner of March 24 noted, “Audubon is forever a part of the city,” because an annexation ordinance had once again passed. A.S. Winstead, one of the incorporators of the Henderson Land Improvement Co., was the sole dissenter on the final reading.
Members of the council rushed to take steps to provide new services to Audubon. One suggested the electric light committee scout the best places to install new streetlights. Winstead, “in the spirit of a joke,” said the city should make a plan for new water mains.
Another said the police committee should go to Audubon and map where new police call boxes should be installed. There were also suggestions for new gas lines as well as garbage collection and dog-catcher services.
“The motions were coming thick and fast” and the city clerk and news reporters were having trouble keeping up.
Audubon experienced a building boom almost immediately. The Gleaner of June 20 reported Connell Bros. had completed 22 houses and cottages there and had another five under contract. Other contractors had built 10 additional houses and cottages.
The Gleaner of Nov. 9 reported the first 18 streetlights had been turned on the night before. The Dec. 6 edition said plans were being laid for a second fire station. It noted the entire fire department had been “a mile away in a $40 shed” fire when the Park Theater and the Barret House hotel were destroyed by fire in 1896.
Construction of Fire Station No. 2 at Helm and Mill streets began in late 1908 and was completed the following year. The building still stands.
Construction of Audubon School at 1400 Clay St. began in July of 1906 and The Gleaner of Sept. 19, 1907, said it was “modern in every respect and is clearly in keeping with the times.”
A gas explosion at 7:10 a.m., Oct. 8, 1976, rendered the building unusable as a school, and it passed into private hands. Demolition of the building began in July 2019. Audubon School Senior Apartments, designed to resemble the old school, was built atop the site.