The Art of Main Street

 

Bringing back the lost art of Main Street buildings

Small-scale mixed-use buildings are popular in Norton Commons, a new urbanist community in Louisville; here’s the latest example.

ROBERT STEUTEVILLE    JUL. 26, 2024

All over America, commercial districts are filled with small, 2- to 3-story buildings with commercial spaces on the first floor below residential units. These standard Main Street buildings, often made of brick, have been dubbed “live works” in recent decades.

Live-work buildings are like mixed-use townhouses. Because of zoning restrictions and a lack of developer familiarity with the type, they are not commonly built in cities or towns today. But they have been constructed in many walkable new urbanist communities, notably Norton Commons in Louisville, Kentucky.

“The live-work has been an immensely popular building type in Norton Commons throughout the build-out of the community,” says Anthony Catania of AMC Architecture & Design, who designed a recent row in the North Village of Norton Commons. You can also find this building type in multiple locations in the South Village, which is finished. Norton Commons is a large traditional neighborhood development (TND) in suburban Louisville that won a Charter Award in 2019. 

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https://www.cnu.org/publicsquare/2024/07/26/reviving-lost-art-main-street-buildings