Dressed in black, smoking cigarettes and disaffected by youth, 22-year-old Reuben Gearhart is one of the few people who doesn’t like what he sees in his rejuvenated hometown.
Too quaint, too many restaurants he can’t afford, too many tourists. Especially during quilt week. Paducah is one of the world’s quilting capitals, and every April the pre-eminent quilting show more than doubles the town’s population.
“The thing about downtown is that it’s beautifully tailored to the people they want here: rich, old people,” said Gearhart, who plays drums for a band called Vicious Mistress.
Which, funny enough, is exactly right. This town’s fortunes have risen during in the last decade by appealing to “rich, old people,” — that is, tourists who spend money — and sprinkling in the things most visitors, young and old, would want within about 10 square blocks: quality food, cozy accommodations, art galleries and, of course, a quilting museum. Even the parking is free.
For a town of 26,000, you could call it sophisticated.
The key has been two redevelopment efforts — one for the downtown, which sits on the banks of the Ohio River, and the other for the city’s oldest residential neighborhood, Lowertown, where dozens of artists have been lured by the promise of cheap or free land.
Where there were blight, drugs dealers and broken sidewalks 10 years ago, there now are art galleries in restored late-19th Century brick homes. The city’s Artist Relocation Program has been widely hailed and frequently copied.
“It’s become a lot more of a lively place,” said Sarah Lance, 28, a student reading Nietzsche beside the river with a mug of coffee one evening. “It was pretty sleepy before. Actually, it’s still pretty sleepy — now it just has artists in it.”
Paducah is not a place to look for a party, except maybe every September for Barbecue on the River, the annual festival of, you guessed it, barbecue on the river.
Instead, Paducah is a friendly and gentle place that is one of those in-between spots, where locals must look to two other states for the sports teams they call their own: the St. Louis Cardinals for baseball and the Tennessee Titans for football. It is a little bit Midwestern and a lot Southern. The bottom of Illinois sits just across the river, but “y’all” is the most common refrain. If that’s not enough, there is a high school named for the wife of Confederate Gen. Lloyd Tilghman.
Even Gearhart, he of Vicious Mistress, appreciates the Southern charm.
“People have hospitality down here,” he said, lighting another cigarette. “You hold a door open for someone, they don’t give you a dirty look like they do up North.”
Paducah was hurting not so long ago.
Like so many cities of its size, a shopping mall — that eternal ode to progress and sprawl at the edge of town — had helped kill the downtown. Buildings were shuttered and visitors were few. The adjacent and once majestic Lowertown was even worse off, its corners becoming drug-slinging and prostitution havens.
About 10 years ago, Paducah started investing in those blighted areas. With the city, bankers and arts community united, it launched its relocation program by making life unpleasant for the owners of the dilapidated Lowertown property, then offering it cheaply or for free to artists willing to move to a city they had likely never heard of. More than 70 came, and from all directions — Hawaii to Texas, Washington to Maryland. Many opened galleries, which transformed Lowertown into what it is today: a well-appointed neighborhood of renovated brick homes; clean, wide streets; with a gallery on nearly every block.
One of the first to arrive, and arguably the face of the program, was Bill Renzulli, a retired doctor who came from rural Maryland. The 69-year-old, with a salt-and-pepper goatee and small earring in his left ear, had been looking for a place to retire when he saw the relocation program advertised in the back of an art magazine.
When he and his wife visited in January 2001, the city presented its best face: They met the mayor, members of the city council and local bank officials. Lowertown was mostly a wreck, he recalled, full of dilapidated cottages and empty houses. But the city’s vision impressed him.
“They were very — I don’t want to say charismatic — they were enthusiastic,” Renzulli said in his Gallery 5 studio, where works for sale and in progress sit in every direction: mostly vivid landscapes with a touch of abstract, splashed with muted color.
He bought his home — a shell gutted by fire — for $17,000, got a $2,500 rebate from the city and was offered as much loan money from the Paducah Bank as he needed. He spent close to 10 times his purchase price rehabbing the house into the homey brick and wood structure it is, with a porch out front for sipping wine at dusk, something he and his wife do often.
Others have repeated Renzulli’s journey to Paducah dozens of times; about 15 galleries now dot the Lowertown streets, and the neighborhood has become a tourism touchstone. Most of the galleries are housed in wonderfully handsome old buildings, and inside you’ll find any number of media: painting, sculpture, photography, jewelry and even a few quilts.
“Coming here was a gamble, and it’s one of the best things I’ve ever done,” said Judeen Theis, a retired high school counselor who moved from Corpus Christi, Texas. She bought the Lowertown land where she built her home and studio for $2,000.
“There’s always enough to do, it’s pretty, and you can always go across the river and gamble in Metropolis,” Illinois, she said.
Which gets to another truth about this place: It would be difficult to pass more than a weekend in Paducah. In Lowertown, make that an afternoon, because despite the neighborhood’s galleries, it isn’t exactly abuzz. There is one cafe, Etcetera, and there are no restaurants. Many of the galleries are open only for a few hours at the end of the week, and some are open only seasonally. On a recent Saturday, almost every gallery was closed because a Lowertown resident was getting married.
A bigger problem has been that many of the relocating artists who thought they could make a living by selling art in Paducah were wrong. Those who have succeeded have customers in another state or on the Web. Those who didn’t, left.
But there is no question that the artists have infused culture, vibrancy and economy. That lone cafe, for instance, has started open-microphone poetry readings on Friday nights, something you wouldn’t have found two years ago.
“There’s no limitations for what we want to do in the arts in Paducah,” said Hannah Grey, 24, a musician who came four years ago with her artist mother from Jacksonville, Ill. “When I got here, there was nothing. It’s grown by leaps and bounds. Now people are coming from all over the world to” — she pauses as if she can barely believe it — “Paducah.”
Long before the art, they came for the quilts. Big quilts, little quilts, Abraham Lincoln quilts, solar-eclipse quilts, madly colorful quilts, plain white quilts.
Sensing an opportunity in a hobby with a fervent fan base, a Paducah couple started the American Quilter’s Society in 1983. They held their first quilting show in 1985 and by 1991 opened the Museum of the American Quilter’s Society, which is being renamed the National Quilt Museum. It draws 40,000 visitors a year from all 50 states. The quilt show draws about 30,000 visitors, jamming hotels in every direction for 50 miles.
The rest of the year, things are far more phlegmatic in little Paducah and its quilt museum. The dim, carpeted space is heavy on women — gray-haired especially — and the men they drag with them. As they go from hanging quilt to hanging quilt, they ooooh and aaaah.
“This one is my favorite,” Ruth Metschuleit, 71, said to her companion about the three-dimensional mind trip that is Noriko Masui’s “A Mandala of Flowers.”
“Every one is your favorite,” replied Karen Dorrough, 52. “You’ve said that four times.”
It was Dorrough’s first time at the museum, and she was impressed by the intricacy and detail within every work. And the detail is remarkable. You see it in every design, every looping border, every stitch.
“It’s not that different than going to the art museum in Chicago,” Dorrough said. “It’s all so unexpected.”
The same could be said for the town itself. Paducah’s downtown has life that cities 10 times the size would envy — wine tastings, open-microphone nights, an art house movie theater and a venue for major (albeit not cutting edge) entertainment (sorry, Willie Nelson and Riverdance).
Brick streets run through its heart, and the decades-old buildings have been held together so nicely that they don’t feel like part of a fabricated history. It feels like the real thing has survived — or more accurately, been reborn.
The Ohio River, which drifts past the downtown, is both a shortcoming and a strength. Bikers, couples, tourists and families visit the waterfront at dusk to watch the tugboats putter by, but the gazers have to do so in what basically is a huge, sloping concrete parking lot. It’s enough to make a city planner retch. The city touts a redevelopment plan in the works that will be long on green space.
Unfortunately, the city is also separated from the river by a concrete flood wall built by the U.S. Army Corp of Engineers after a devastating 1937 flood. For years the wall “was just the color of concrete, not much to look at,” one local said. But the town commissioned a 10-year project in the mid-1990s to paint the wall, turning what was a boring slab of gray into an inspired, colorful history of the region in pictures.
The way Paducah has treated that wall sort of reflects its impulses as a whole: It could have left well enough alone no matter how drab, but it made an effort to do better. The murals have improved life for Betty McManus, who stares at the wall all day from her spot behind the cash register at the River Heritage Museum.
“I think we’ve come a long way,” McManus said. “It’s nice to be able to come downtown and shop and have a nice lunch. Lowertown is gorgeous. Visitors always say, ‘You have such a lovely town.’ It makes you feel good to live here.”
– – –
IF YOU GO
GETTING THERE
Delta and Northwest fly from O’Hare International Airport to Paducah, though not directly. A recent search turned up a round-trip fare on Northwest for $170, though a week later the price was up to $252. If you’d rather drive, it’s an easy six-hour shot south, just past Illinois’ southern border.
SLEEPING
Plenty of Paducah B&Bs offer typical antique and artistic charm, but Escape B&B (escapebb.com; 270-442-3612), a couple of miles from downtown, is an interesting change of pace. The single-story brick home and seemingly dicey neighborhood don’t inspire at first glance, but inside all is well — and with a movie theme to boot. Two of the rooms have hot tubs and the third a whirlpool. Two also have 65-inch TVs. There’s a DVD library of nearly 300 movies — from “Casablanca” to all three “Tremors” films. The common area includes a 100-inch screen with a projection system, stereo sound and soft couches. Breakfast comes out of cellophane, but the place is clean, comfortable, the hosts are friendly, and all for $65 a night. All three rooms can be had for $150. Fox Briar Inn (foxbriarinn.com; 877-369-4661), housed in a wonderful old brick building, is downtown’s most historic accommodation. The rooms essentially function as apartments.
DINING
Ask about Cynthia’s (cynthiasristorante.com; 270-443-3319) and locals will say two things: It’s great and it’s expensive. True and sort of true. The quality and prices are in line with an above-average restaurant in Chicago; if I lived in Paducah, I’d find a way to eat here once a week. The menu is full of classic offerings done dazzlingly right — meat, fish and pasta all fresh and prepared with care. Pastas, breads and desserts are all homemade. Kirchhoff’s (kirchhoffsbakery.com; 270-442-7117), which has had a presence in town since 1873, serves an excellent lunch. Their take on the muffuletta, teeming with fresh ingredients, shows they have done their homework. Better still, you can stop in the bakery after your meal for a top-notch cookie or pastry and take a loaf of freshly baked bread for the road. Max’s Brick Oven (270-575-3473) offers quality dinners, especially their brick oven-fired pizzas. A barbecue warning: d. Starnes (270-442-2122) is popular with tourists and Backwoods (two locations) is popular with locals. But Paducah barbecue has three unforgivable flaws: no beef on the menus, the sauces tend to be thin, and the sandwiches are served on pressed white bread. You can get better barbecue in Chicago. … Outside it looks like a fancy Denny’s, but B. Russell’s (270-444-9700) was well worth the trip out of downtown. I ordered the salmon only after making my waiter swear several times that it had never been frozen. And I was impressed: well marinated, fresh and sprightly. Plus, an impressive beer and wine list. The chef/owner will be changing the name within the next few months, possibly to Sulli’s Steakhouse, but that, too, should be worth a try based on my meal.
THINGS TO DO
The reborn Lowertown neighborhood has nearly 15 art galleries with artwork made mostly by residents who came to Paducah through the Artist Relocation Program. The neighborhood is pretty enough to warrant a stroll even without the galleries. The best time to go might be the second Saturday of each month, when all the galleries are open from noon to 8 p.m., though the Lowertown Art and Music Festival, a weekend of music, art and food, will be next weekend. The Museum of the American Quilter’s Society (quiltmuseum.org), which is in the process of renaming itself the National Quilt Museum, is actually a great time. Dozens hang in the dim galleries. Some are stunningly beautiful, and all are testaments to intricacy and craftsmanship. The Yeiser Art Center (theyeiser.org), in the heart of downtown, is a small space dedicated to local artists and worth a visit. Less than an hour away is the Land Between the Lakes (lbl.org), a national recreation area that offers hiking, fishing, horseback riding, an elk and bison prairie and even a planetarium. The River’s Edge International Film Festival, which launched in 2004, will be Nov. 5-8 this year. Just across the river is Metropolis, Ill., which is home to a giant Superman statue outside the courthouse.
— J.N.
———-
jbnoel@tribune.com
