By Kevin Rayburn

Where loft dwellers now make omelets and cappuccino, men and women once toiled making cars and war supplies.

The history of the Reynolds Building—as the UofL Belknap Campus facility was known for almost 50 years—is the history of the 20th century.

Located at the corner of Third Street and Eastern Parkway on the campus’ southwest corner, the historic building is now the home of 21st century upscale, spacious loft apartments known as The Reynolds Lofts.

In 2005 UofL sold the building to the McGoodwin Co. of Lexington, Ky., in an agreement in which McGoodwin would develop the 90,000-square-foot facility into 77 upscale condominiums. The arrangement is one example of the university’s efforts to revitalize underused assets. Loft units began selling last year.

The renowned German-American industrial architect Albert Kahn likely never imagined the building being put to such use when he designed it as an assembly plant for the Ford Motor Co. nearly 100 years ago. Ford began making cars in Louisville in 1912, piecing together Model Ts at the rate of 12 a day in a tiny assembly facility downtown. But in 1914 the company broke ground on its modern Third Street facility. The first Model Ts rolled off the line there in January 1916.

Model T components were shipped via adjacent rail lines to the plant, which in its heyday in the mid-1920s employed 600 and turned out as many as 200 cars a day. In 1925, the company moved its primary assembly operations to a new plant on Southwestern Parkway in west Louisville. The assembly plant later moved to a gigantic new facility in south Louisville in 1955. Some operations remained at Third Street until the company sold the building to the Reynolds Metals Co. in 1940. Not long after, Reynolds converted its metal manufacturing to the production of war supplies during World War II, just as Ford had done in 1918 during World War I.

After Reynolds moved its operations, the company donated the building to the university in 1958. Appraised at $1.1 million it was the largest private gift to UofL up to its time.

In subsequent years the building housed several UofL programs including library and archives annexes, music school practice rooms and a computer center. But age took its toll, pipes burst frequently, broken windows abounded and many regarded the building as an eyesore. UofL decommissioned it in 2000.

The recent renovation of the Reynolds Building restored many of Kahn’s original design features, including the large sets of unobstructed windows, meant to light and ventilate the structure.

The restored windows are among the many dramatic changes that put the former Reynolds Building into a whole new light. Visit www.coolspaces.com to see and learn more about the building’s 21st century incarnation. Photo: This archival photo of the Reynolds Building was made by Crawford and Shook in 1955.