Smoketown, Louisville

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Smoketown is a neighborhood one mile southeast of downtown Louisville, Kentucky. Smoketown has been a historically black neighborhood since the Civil War. It is the only neighborhood in the city that has had such a continuous presence.

The name apparently comes from the large number of (smoke-producing) kilns in the area during its early brick-macking days. An 1823 newspaper advertises a brickyard in the area as part of the farm and residence of "the late Mark Lampton", after whom Lampton Street is probably named. 9 of 20 brickyards in the city had Smoketown addresses according to a 1871 Caron's directory, although none remained by 1880, as apparently the supply of clay from under the neighborhood had run out. The abandoned, water-filled clay pits may have given rise to the name "Frogtown" for the neighborhood, which appeared in print in 1880.

Some residential development by whites of German ancestry began in the 1850s, but due to the arrival of thousands of freed slaves who moved there from various parts of rural Kentucky after the Civil War, it was solidly African American by 1870. A streetcar line was extended down Preston Street to Kentucky in 1865, spurring growth.

With its shotgun houses and narrow streets, Smoketown was a densely populated area with a population of over 15,000 by 1880. African American property ownership was rare, with most living in properties rented from whites.

By the 1960s the area suffered from high crime and unemployment rates, causing massive population loss. Many of the old shotgun houses have been razed and housing projects built in their place.

Albert E. Meyzeek Middle School is located in the neighborhood.

Smoketown is bounded by Broadway, CSX RR tracks, Kentucky Sreet, and I-65. As of 2000, the population of Smoketown was 2,116 ^[1].