The Marianne is a beautiful 1940s Art Deco, single-screen movie theater located in the Northern Kentucky Cincinnati suburb of Bellvue.
The Marianne opened for business on March 1, 1942. It has a seating capacity of 542. By the mid 1990s the Marianne had began running second run movies and eventually closed for business. The last movie to play in the theater was the 1998 Tommy Lee Jones film “U.S. Marshals”
In February of 2018 developers announced that the theater would be restored and turned into an event center for live concerts and other performances.
Since starting this blog in 2014, I have covered nearly 80 abandoned school buildings in 9 states stretching from Eastern North Carolina to the banks of the Mississippi River in Cairo, Illinois. Today, while researching for my newest entry covering the Sadieville School in northern Scott County, (Kentucky), I came across something I had yet to find in the reason a school was closed. Enrollment was getting too high. 90% of the schools I have visited have been closed due to the opposite, declining enrollment.
I always thought it was rather odd that a school in the fastest growing county in the entire state would be closed and abandoned. In 1984-85 Sadieville was home to 150 students. By 1988 that number had jumped to 245.
The Scott County School System decided to build a larger, more modern facility to serve northern Scott County located about 5 miles south of Sadieville. Construction was swift and by March 5, 1990, Sadieville was closed and it’s students and staff had moved to their new school, Northern Elementary. The last 28 years have not been kind to the campus. The grounds are overgrown, the front of the building is almost covered by brush and trees that have popped up. But considering the building is closing in on being 100 years old, its still standing and relatively structurally sound once you take out of consideration the roof and especially the gymnasium area. The school has obviously been used as a storage building but has now fallen victim to faulty ceilings and vandalism.
I dont know if there were any windows that were still fully intact.
Its rather odd to find three school districts who border each other have a school by the same name in all three. That was the case in Clay, Leslie and Perry County Kentucky until several years ago. I have already covered the closed Big Creek Elementary School in Leslie County in this blog. That school closed several years ago. The school covered in this entry is the Big Creek Elementary that was located in Perry County. The school is located near the intersection of Kentucky 80 and Kentucky 1096 in the community of Avawam about 8 miles west of Hazard near the Perry/Leslie County line.
Big Creek Elementary was closed in 2014 due to declining enrollment and a planned consolidation of schools in Perry County. At the end of the 2013-14 school year Big Creek was home to 136 students in grades K-8.
The US Post Office for the community of Partridge, Kentucky is located about a mile and a half from the Letcher / Harlan County line on an old alignment of US 119. Partridge is about 5 miles north of Cumberland on US 119 and about 18 miles south of Whitesburg in Letcher County.
Eolia is one of the south eastern most communities in Letcher County, Kentucky. Located about 10 miles south of Whitesburg and 15 miles north of Cumberland, the community is also home to Arlie Boggs Elementary School.
Photo credit: University of Louisville Photo Archives
When I was little I liked to study maps. I can remember getting the big giant road atlas out and just studying, looking, making notes. Of course living in small town Kentucky, Louisville, the largest city in my home state was often a source of obsession. When thinking back to those maps, Jefferson, Mall St Matthews, and Oxmoor Center, they were all there. Mid City Mall was never mentioned, and being on Bardstown Road, I honestly dont know that I was ever in that part of town until I was a grown man. Before I dive more into the pictures let me give a little history.
Mid City Mall was built on the site of the German Protestant Orphan’s Home, which was founded in 1851 and moved to the 10-acre Highlands site in 1902. It remained there until 1962, but the structure and grounds were sold for $500,000 in 1959 to mall developers. The aging structure was demolished and the orphanage moved to Bardstown Road and Goldsmith Lane. Developers then built what became Kentucky’s second enclosed mall. The initial plan, unveiled in 1958, called for a $7.5 million, five-story mall with a pool in front on the Bardstown Road side and penthouse apartments on the top floor. The plan was gradually whittled down to a one-story plan with a lower level. The main developer of the project was Guy E. McGaughey, Jr., an attorney from Lawrenceville, Ill. The concept of an enclosed mall was very new. There were only a handful of enclosed malls in the US at the time. In drawing up the business model for the Mall, Mr. McGaughey had no basis for the rents. There was not a history for how much to charge the tenants for space, maintenance, housekeeping, repairs, trash pick-up, etc. Consequently, revenues were never enough to keep the Mall up-to-date and clean. Construction began in March 1962 and the mall was completed in October of that year at a cost of $3 million. The shopping center formally opened on October 10, 1962, in a ribbon-cutting ceremony attended by Louisville Mayor William O. Cowger and Jefferson County Judge Marlow Cook. The mall contained 180,000 square feet of leasable space and 22 stores. On June 21, 1964 an early morning fire that started in the Cherokee Book and Card Stop caused $200,000 in damage to the mall.
There was also a Kresge store in this mall that held its grand opening in October of 1962.
The mall originally opened with Winn-Dixe supermarket. When Winn-Dixie pulled out of the Louisville market in 2004, Buehler’s, a chain based in Jasper, Indiana, (not to be confused with the chain of the same name based in Ohio). Amid financial difficulties Buehler’s filed for bankruptcy in 2005 and closed both Louisville stores. The space was quickly taken over by Valu Market, a local Louisville area chain. Valu Market remains there today.
The mall is basically an elongated square on two floors. The bottom floor was once home to a skating rink. Today the mall is home to many non traditional mall tennants including a comedy club, doctors offices, and a branch of the Louisville Public Library. //embedr.flickr.com/assets/client-code.js
In 2015 it was announced that the mall would recieve renovations and new tennants. Today the mall is full and renovations have been completed.
4:30 came so early this morning. So early in fact I rolled back over and slept until 5. In doing that I had to leap out of bed when my alarm went off and leave as quickly as possible. I was out the door and on the road by about 5:20. The grand total for the day was 485 miles. That 485 miles included 2 new Kmart stores, a mall in Louisville on Bardstown Road that I didnt even know existed, my customary stop at the Falls of the Ohio River State Park in Clarksville, Indiana, 2 Goodwill Outlets, 1 regular Goodwill store, Monument Circle in downtown Indianapolis, and the Meadow Lake Wind Farm off I65 near Chalmers. Ill give another update tomorrow with a few more pictures from the day. Enjoy and thanks for reading!
First and foremost before I begin this entry I want to give credit and thanks to the Martins Fork Lake Facebook page for sharing these photos. Ever since I was small I have always wondered what the land looked like before the lake was built at Smith. So, with great gratitude I thank the folks who control the lake’s social media page for having the thoughtfulness and courtesy to share these wonderful archives with us.
Im starting off the photos with what I consider to be the holy grail of the bunch. This photo is looking toward the bridge nearest the beach. Imagine that little road running up and down the middle is the road along the beach area. If you look closely you can see the roof of the old Smith School and the rock church near the center. Im shocked at how flat this area was.
This second picture is looking off toward the lake from the last bridge. In fact, to this day, if the water is down far enough you can still tell where this bridge was that is in the picture. The rest of the photos are pretty self explanatory, but fascinating no doubt.
The last picture is an old welcome sign that was at the lake until the 1980s according to the lake’s Facbook page.
I also have a couple of other entries that includes more historical pictures from Martins Fork Lake and the Smith community that I posted a few years ago, if you are interested in reading those articles you can do so by clicking the links below:
This Logan County Courthouse was constructed in 1903 and remodeled in 1972. This courthouse replaced earlier courthouses dating back to 1792 that were located at the site of the current day public square in town.
Sue Bennett College was a private college located in the southeastern Kentucky town of London in Laurel County. The school first opened in 1897 as an elementary school. In 1922 the school became a junior college and recieved accredidation. The school remained affiliated with the United Methodist Church throughout its operation.
In 1991 a new president was elected who pushed for the expansion of athletic programs and a business degree program. The new programs and atheletic offerings were implemented in hopes of increasing enrollment, but that never materialzed and the college fell into debt. After many financial and legal problems on September 22, 1997 the acredidation was stripped from the college.
By October 6th the United States Department of Education imposed an emergency action against Sue Bennett College, issuing a Notice of Intent to Terminate the institution from participation in the federal student financial assistance programs authorized by Title IV of the Higher Education Act of 1965. The college requested a hearing to appeal that proceeding. The appeal was based on SBC’s pending litigation versus the Eastern District of Kentucky to have the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools reinstate its accreditation. However, Judge Richard I. Slippen rejected SBC’s request, and thus the possibility of continued federal financial assistance was dead, as was hopes of remaining open. Upon further research for this article I discovered the college was sold in 2014. Until that time it had been used for community college and Union College classes. The link to the article announcing its sale can be found by clicking HERE. Further reading can be found on my friends blog at abandonedonline by clicking HERE
By the mid 1990s the Marianne had began running second run movies and eventually closed for business. The last movie to play in the theater was the 1998 Tommy Lee Jones film “U.S. Marshals” 
Jamie in Wanderland 