At 727 West Main Street, a cast-iron facade from 1878 fronts the Kentucky Science Center, Kentucky's largest science museum and a proud stop on Museum Row. The museum began in 1871 as a natural history collection and today operates as a nonprofit that welcomes many students on field trips and about 550,000 visitors annually. Look up and you’ll see the distinctive cast-iron facade set against limestone, a building originally built in 1878 as a dry goods warehouse and later purchased by the city in 1975.
The museum moved into these rooms in 1977 and earned several design awards for preserving that 19th-century shell. Inside, families remember a special hands-on children’s area — renamed and renovated as KidZone in 1998 — with six educational activity sections. A four-story digital theater was added in 1988 and refreshed in early 2014, and the pendulum has been a fixture of the building for decades.
Notice the cast-iron details, the long-running pendulum, and the vibrant stretch of Museum Row beyond the entrance.