page_title: Belknap, Louisville
section_title: Early history
hierarchical_section_title: Belknap, Louisville / History / Early history
caption_attribution_description: Belknap Research Building.
context_page_description: Belknap is an urban neighborhood three and a half miles east of downtown Louisville, Kentucky, USA. The neighborhood is bound by Bardstown Road, Douglass Boulevard, Dundee Road and Newburg Road. It is part of a larger area of Louisville called the Highlands. Belknap is often described as the neighborhood in the heart of The Highlands.
context_section_description: The Belknap neighborhood was once farm land, two miles (3 km) south of where Bardstown Road (then Bardstown Turnpike) began at Highland Avenue. There was a stagecoach stop at Douglass Boulevard and Bardstown Road called the "Two-mile House." Abraham Lincoln frequented the stagecoach stop when he was visiting the Speed Family at Farmington.
  As the city of Louisville grew, so did the Highlands. The Catholic parish St. Francis of Assisi built its first church on the Michael Zimlich property in 1886. Zimlich sold 24 acres (97,000 m²) in 1901, paving the way for one of the first commercial strips along Bardstown and Dundee roads. In 1909, the Eilers family sold a 22 foot (7 m) easement for the streetcar turnaround and the annexation of the loop occurred, now called Douglass Loop.  Zimlich later sold 26 more acres, and between 1916 and 1918 Boulevard Napoleon was developed.
  When 30 acres (120,000 m²) of adjacent property, owned by the Heintzmann family, was sold, it became the first section of University Park, so named because it would lead to the University of Louisville. The street names were changed in 1918 to Ivy League school names, such as Harvard and Yale, to connect to the new subdivision. However, a building bond to facilitate the new campus was rejected by voters in 1920, and the plan never materialized.
  The original school on Sils Avenue was named for William Richardson Belknap (William Burke Belknap's son) and opened in 1916, two years after his death. When the school opened, it was a city school, but most of the area was still county. The county children had to go to Maple Grove, present day location of Air Devil's Inn, across from Bowman Field on Taylorsville Road.
caption: Belknap Research Building, University of Louisville
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