History
The school at 1810 Sils Avenue opened in 1916 as the William R. Belknap School, named for the son of hardware magnate William Burke Belknap. It was designed by architect J. Earl Henry and was the last of seven schools built with a local bond issuance from 1914 to 1916.
The school closed in 1978 and was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1982. In 1983, Jefferson County Public Schools sold the building to a private developer. It was intermittently used as offices, private school classrooms, and for church services until 2006. In 2001, the Louisville Metro Landmarks Commission designated it as a local landmark.
The Belknap School is an example of Louisville's eclectic architectural styles of the early twentieth century. The craftsmanship on the building's exterior makes it one of the city's finest examples of Sullivanesque detailing. The school site originally took up an entire 2.15-acre city block, and the main school building has about 30,000 square feet of indoor space.
In 1995, the Belknap Neighborhood Association adopted a geometric motif from the school building for its logo, now found throughout the neighborhood.
Before Louisville was a city, land that is now Belknap was granted to veterans of the French and Indian War. Kentucky was part of Virginia until 1792, the year the Commonwealth of Kentucky became the 15th state.
In 1790, the Doup family came to the area from a region along the French and German border. Later the Fred Kaelin family owned part of the Doup property, and in 1923, the Kaelin’s auctioned it for development. The Doup family Cemetery is on Bardstown Road at the edge of the Belknap neighborhood, just across the street from where Doup and Kaelin Avenues meet. There is another house remaining from the Doup Family farm on Eastview Avenue.
In 1801, Jonathan Clark, older brother of George Rogers and William, bought the 1,000 acres from John Campbell that originally belonged to James McCorkle. Clark built the lower front section of the house at 1840 Trough Springs – it was Clark who gave the acreage its name – from a spring that still bubbled in the back yard in 1951, when the Imordes bought the house.
The Belknap Moniker
The William Belknap Family who had created Belknap Hardware and Manufacturing Company in 1840, donated 87.6 acres that had been the Gaertner Farm – between Sewanee Drive and Bellarmine University to the University of Louisville.
Belknap was recognized nationally in May 2012, by Neighborhoods, USA, a national non-profit organization committed to building and strengthening neighborhood organizations with its 2012 Neighborhood Newsletter Award. The award was presented during NUSA's annual conference in Indianapolis and is a further evidence to what Belknap residents already know instinctively: they live in one of the best neighborhoods in America!
