Louisville resident Chris Robinson has been playing the trumpet almost every day since he was 9 years old. As an adult, Robinson worked for the city, handling abandoned and vacant buildings. One day, he passed by a dilapidated, three-story, Victorian-style home in the Russell neighborhood.
“I feel like I've been here before,” Robinson said Thursday, remembering the moment he chanced upon the structure. “And then come to find out that it was the school where I took my first music lesson.”
Robinson was a student at The Bourgard College of Music and Arts, Louisville first arts school for Black youth. The school closed down in 2017 and had been in disrepair since.
On Thursday, the building reopened with a fresh coat of paint, updated windows and new instruments.
Trumpets and saxophones blared at 2503 W. Muhammad Ali Blvd., celebrating a new beginning, among Russell residents, city leaders and local Black musicians. Robinson — now 47 — was there to cut the ribbon.
“Music's always been where it has been for me,” he said. “So I think it's great that this is coming back, and we're going to have another generation of students that will have that same ability, and hopefully music will do the same for them as it's done for me.”
One of Bourgard’s former educators, McDaniel Bluitt, will be at the helm.
“I'm glad to see that Mr. Bluitt is able to come back here, and he's still around kicking and doing what he did for me 40 years ago,” Robinson said.
The West Louisville Performing Arts Academy — which Bluitt founded more than 30 years ago — plans to move into the building. The music school, which offers music lessons and choral programs, has hopped locations over the years, including to local churches and the Kentucky Center for African American Heritage.
“With the return of the Bourgard College of Music and Art, we don't just reopen a building, but we revive a legacy,” said Louisville Mayor Craig Greenberg. “And we breathe life into a place that once nurtured some of Louisville's most celebrated African American artists and musicians.”
Open enrollment for the West Louisville Performing Arts Academy begins Aug. 9.
In 1927, Caroline Bourgard, a white music educator, purchased the college to open a music school for Black youth. Bourgard saw a lack of music education for Black children in Jim Crow-era Louisville, and she partnered with the director of the Louisville Conservatory of Music to run the school.
The property was donated to Louisville Metro Government in 2020, and the academy will rent the space. The city received a $500,000 grant to restore the building from The National Park Service the following year.
