Historial Group Breaks Ground for Move Downtown

A national group broke ground today on Louisville’s West Main Street for a genealogical library. WFPL’s Elizabeth Kramer has more.The National Society of the Sons of the American Revolution plans to rehabilitate a building across from the Louisville Slugger Museum and move there. The group plans for construction to be completed on a genealogical library at the site in about a year.Edward F. Butler is the group’s president general. He says the new library will draw more visitors to downtown Louisville."Genealogists from all over the country, especially the Midwest," he says, "will be coming here because we are probably the fourth leading genealogical library in the country."Dan Preston is the project’s architect."The [library] space will be finished with stained wood, be finely detailed with steel stairways and railings throughout that will reinforce the historic nature of the building as well as the front facades be totally renovated totally renovated," Preston says.The organization, which has made its home in Louisville since 1979, also plans to have an educational center, gift shop and offices in the 40,000 square feet on Main Street."Eventually, we’re going to have our headquarters and our museum and our archives here," Butler says. "And it will be so convenient for people to just walk in. And we think we’ll get a lot of walk in traffic."So far, it has raised nearly half of the $10 million it’s seeking for the entire project.The group has more then 28,000 members and has its current headquarters in Old Louisville.