Frazier History Museum
The Frazier History Museum, previously known as the Frazier Historical Arms Museum and the Frazier International History Museum, is a Kentucky history museum located on Museum Row in the West Main District of downtown Louisville, Kentucky.
Founded in 2004 as a museum of historical arms and armor, the Frazier has since expanded its focus. An affiliate of the Smithsonian Institution, the museum preserves and presents Kentucky history through artifacts, exhibitions, educational programs, Bourbon tastings, and guided tours. Subjects of permanent exhibitions include Kentucky history, Kentucky pop culture, Kentucky bourbon whiskey, the Lewis and Clark Expedition, and the Stewart Historic Miniatures Collection. The museum is a non-profit organization funded by private donations.
In 2018, the Frazier became the official starting point of the Kentucky Bourbon Trail.
History
Prehistory
was a wealthy businessman and philanthropist in Louisville. When a tornado struck the city during the 1974 Super Outbreak, it destroyed Frazier's home, and a rare Kentucky long rifle that he owned – a family heirloom made for his great-great-grandfather in Bardstown in the 1820s and gifted to him by his grandfather in 1952 – disappeared. Frazier would never find the rifle, but his search for it would spark a passion for collecting antique weapons.In 2000, the year he stepped down as vice-chairman of Brown-Forman, Frazier loaned his arms collection to the Kentucky History Center in Frankfort for a special exhibit titled The Weapon As Art. The exhibit ran for two months, but it was attended by about 10,000 people. Inspired by the turnout, Frazier decided to found a museum where he could showcase his private collection on permanent public display.
On May 25, 2001, The Courier-Journal announced the Frazier Historical Arms Museum, a visitor attraction planned for downtown Louisville that was scheduled to open in fall 2002 or spring 2003. The museum was to be located in the building complex at 829 West Main Street, one of the two neighboring properties that Mr. Frazier had recently purchased. In 2002, a website was launched for the Owsley Brown Frazier Historical Arms Museum, an institution whose stated mission was "to acclaim the artistry, craftsmanship, and technological innovation of weapons and their makers."
In February 2003, Mr. Frazier signed a formal agreement entering into a partnership with the Royal Armouries Museum in Leeds, also known as the United Kingdom's National Museum of Arms and Armour, an ancient institution of the Tower of London that was originally founded to manufacture armor for the Kings of England. The agreement outlined plans for the Frazier Museum to borrow and display arms and armament from the Royal Armouries. It was the first time that a British national museum had engaged in an ongoing collaboration with an organization beyond its shores.
Construction on the museum started in 2001 and ended in 2003. Mr. Frazier provided most of the funds for the $32 million project and backed the loans that were taken out to finance the development.
Frazier Historical Arms Museum
The Frazier Historical Arms Museum opened to the public on May 22, 2004.The initial collection consisted of roughly 1,500 objects from the personal collection of Owsley Brown Frazier, dating from 1492 to World War I, and approximately 350 objects borrowed from the Royal Armouries, dating from 1066 to the 1960s. Combined the collections included guns, cannons, swords, daggers, arrows, and other historical arms and armor sourced from Flanders, France, Germany, Italy, and the United Kingdom, as well as life-size tableaux of mannequins and horse figures depicting battle scenes from European history.
Frazier International History Museum
On May 17, 2006, the museum changed its name to the Frazier International History Museum, a nod to the multinational origins of its collection. That year, the museum received another influx of foreign arms and military artifacts from the Royal Armouries. Over time, the museum began to shift its focus away from war and weaponry toward more general topics of state, national, and global history. The permanent collection was gradually de-emphasized as the Frazier moved toward larger, temporary exhibitions.In August 2010, the Frazier unveiled the Bloedner Monument, a limestone marker that is thought to be the nation's oldest surviving Civil War memorial. Acquired as a long-term loan from the National Cemetery Administration, the historic monument honors the soldiers of the U.S. 32nd Indiana Volunteer Regiment who died at the Battle of Rowlett's Station.
In October 2010, the Frazier introduced a theatrical performance series based on the works of Gothic horror fiction writer Edgar Allan Poe. The series became An Evening With Poe, an annually recurring, week-long Halloween tradition. The performances were adapted and staged by Tony Dingman, Kelly Moore, and Eric Frantz, three of the Frazier's Teaching Artists, and featured live music performed by The Tamerlane Trio.
Frazier History Museum
In 2011, the museum was renamed the Frazier History Museum.In May 2012, a bronze sculpture of a Japanese warrior riding horseback into battle by Douwe Blumberg titled Way of Horse and Bow was gifted to the Frazier by actor William Shatner and his wife Elizabeth. In August, the museum's founder and chief benefactor Owsley Brown Frazier died.
The last remaining objects on loan from the Royal Armouries were returned in January 2015.
In 2017, the museum hosted The Hunger Games: The Exhibition, a special exhibition about the dystopian film franchise starring Jennifer Lawrence. Lawrence, a Louisville native, partnered with the Frazier to help promote the exhibition.
Lonely Planet named Kentucky Bourbon Country as one of the top 10 U.S. destinations to visit in 2018 and cited the Frazier Museum as a main attraction. In March 2018, the Frazier sold the first 250 bottles of Final Reserve: James Thompson and Brother Bourbon, a whiskey that had been aged 45 years in the barrel, making it the most mature bourbon ever bottled.
With the opening of the Kentucky Bourbon Trail Welcome Center on August 30, 2018, the Frazier became the official starting point of the Kentucky Bourbon Trail, a project launched in 1999 by the Kentucky Distillers' Association to promote bourbon tourism in the state.
In November 2019, the tenth and final season of An Evening With Poe wrapped. During the course of the program's ten-year run, the Frazier's staff adapted a total of 33 of Poe's works, including poems, short stories, plays, and a novel. According to Dr. Hal Poe, a former president of The Poe Foundation and living relative of Edgar Allan Poe, the Frazier has staged and performed more of Poe's works than anyone in the world.
Building
Located on Museum Row in the Bourbon District of downtown Louisville, the museum occupies a late 19th century, Chicago-style commercial structure of 100,000 square feet that was originally called the "Doerhoefer Building".The site's history
As river-based commerce and trade fueled Louisville's early growth following its settlement in 1779, West Main Street became the first street established by residents.Because of its close proximity to Main Street and the Ohio River, the intersection of Ninth and Main Streets came to serve important commercial purposes. A tobacco warehouse built at the northeast corner of the intersection began operating in the 1850s. The firm of Meguiar, Harris & Co. managed the so-called 9th Street Tobacco Warehouse until the 1890s.
On March 27, 1890, a tornado measuring F4 on the Fujita scale visited Louisville, carving a path from the Parkland neighborhood to Crescent Hill. Labeled "the whirling tiger of the air" by The Courier-Journal, the tornado killed an estimated 76 to 120 people and destroyed 766 buildings, one of which was the 9th Street Tobacco Warehouse.
A rapid reconstruction effort led to the building of more cast-iron façades along West Main between Sixth and Ninth Streets – in all, what would amount to the second largest number of cast-iron façades in the country behind SoHo in New York.
A small article published in the March 23, 1897, issue of The Courier-Journal announced that John Doerhoefer, the president of National Tobacco Works, would build "four handsome business houses at Ninth and Main Streets" on the site of the old 9th Street Tobacco Warehouse.
Architecture
Mr. Doerhoefer hired D. X. Murphy and Bros., the architectural firm that two years earlier had designed the iconic Twin Spires atop the grandstand at Churchill Downs, to draw the plans. It was to be made of brick, stone, and iron with a tower at the corner.Established in 1898 and built of cast iron and yellow-buff brick, the Doerhoefer Building was actually built as a complex of four adjoining buildings with common walls and a single façade. The structure spans four typical Main Street fronts before it rounds the corner of Ninth Street with an oriel topped with a cornice roof.
Each façade is separated by pilasters with simple ornamentation. Machine-made festoons decorate the horizontal bandcourse which divides each major section between the second and third floors. Windows on the fourth floor are separated by brick pilasters with stone capitals, which continue into arches of radiating bricks with some trim.
Much of the original stone ornamentation has gone missing.
Ox Breeches
In 1900, Ox Breeches Manufacturing Company began operating a garment factory in the Doerhoefer complex. The self-proclaimed "largest producer of pants in America," the firm employed some 350 workers at the factory – 25 men, the rest women and girls.On April 7, 1905, the day its contract with the union was set to expire, the firm announced three imminent changes: first, it would henceforth run the factory as an open shop; second, the 10% pay raise the workers had won upon unionizing in 1903 would be repealed; and third, the length of the work week would be extended from 54 to 60 hours. In response, 250 of the workers walked out and unanimously voted to go on strike. Over the summer, 106 of the strikers sued Ox Breeches for damages and back pay, claiming they had been blacklisted by the company managers. In December, a judge ruled for the defendant in what has been called "a decision of importance, both to organized labor and to capitalists."
During the night of January 6, 1916, a fire broke out on the third or fourth floor of the Ox Breeches factory, causing large scale damage. The story was reported in newspapers from Connecticut to Hawaii, including in Cincinnati's German language paper. The fire completely destroyed the building at 825 West Main Street, leaving a vacant space at what is now the site of the Frazier's vestibule and outdoor park. A Louisville Metro government history of the Louisville Fire Department calls the event "the first major recorded fire in the early 20th century."
Charring is still visible on some of the timber joists on the southeast side of the building.