LOUISVILLE, Ky. — Louisville city leaders are tying to figure out what to do with a local landmark in Cherokee Park that could collapse at any minute.
Locals call it “The Tee-pee” or “The Witch’s hat”. Its official name is the Hogan’s Fountain Pavilion. It has stood in the park for decades now, but officials say they don’t know how much longer it’ll stay standing.
The gazebo has called Cherokee Park home since the 1960s, but now its future is uncertain.
Historic Louisville said the gazebo was built in 1965 and is Cherokee Park’s most prominent landmark. The pavilion even survived an F4 tornado in 1974.
“Hogan’s Fountain is such an iconic part of certainly the Highlands, but also the city of Louisville,” Cassie Chambers Armstrong, the Metro Council District 8 Representative, explained to Spectrum News 1.
There have been repairs in the past. Armstrong — whose district this is in — said the roof was replaced in the past. But she said the structure’s design causes water to run down and erode it from the base up, every time it rains.
“The issue today is the very large beams that form the base of the teepee and support the entire structure are basically like sawdust in how it’s been described to me on the inside. There’s metal around the outside, so you don’t see it. But it’s literally like having ground mulch in there,” Armstrong explained. “That’s how rotted it is.”
It has been closed since the summer. Fencing around it also blocks a small playground.
“Even now we don’t know how expensive the damage is, because it’s actually so unstable that it would be unsafe to send someone up to investigate the very top of the structure,” Chambers added. “There are also issues with, of course, as it leans, with the roof becoming unstable. So, there’s a real chance we could have an uncontrolled collapse of the structure which, of course, would be a worst-case scenario. So, everyone in government is working on how we prevent that and what our options are.”
Armstrong says trying to save the structure would cost about $1.3 million in taxpayer dollars. Knocking it down would be much cheaper. A new structure would cost about $500,000. She says the Parks Department is figuring out how much it’ll cost to try to save iconic pieces of it.
She said people in the area are telling her how they feel. “I would say the majority of folks I hear from would really hate to see it go. I would hate to see it go,” Armstrong explained.
John McConnell, who uses this part of the park regularly, feels otherwise.
“I’m with tearing it down. Start over again.” McConnell explained.
Armstrong says it’s very important they get public feedback on this. She expects to have a lot of conversations in the new year. She says they are trying to balance two things — getting extensive community feedback coupled with the fact that the structure might fall down at any-given moment.