Greenup preserves, celebrates its downtown porches

GREENUP (JG-TC) -- The upper-floor porches of downtown Greenup have provided shade for more than 100 years and now have the added role of drawing visitors to this community.

The porches were built in the 19th century to shade downtown storefronts and the residents upstairs, said Linda Matherly, secretary of the Cumberland County Historical Society. She said these residents sat on their upper-floor front porches to enjoy the cool breeze and watch parades.

While the downtown porches in many communities have been torn down, Greenup has preserved its porches. Matherly said most of the porches were rebuilt in the early 1990s as part of a village beautification project that has helped earn the downtown a listing on the National Register of Historic Places.

"There were a lot of pictures of the old porches and they tried to match them up as best they could. They tried to keep it as true to original as possible," Matherly said.

Greenup is nicknamed the "Village of Porches" and uses porch imagery in its village logo. Matherly said she fields a lot of questions about the porches from visitors to the historical society's Cumberland County Military Museum, Historic Greenup Depot, and Johnson Building and Genealogical Library.

Porch-lined Cumberland Street is part of the original National Road, the first federally funded and built road, which connected the East to westward expansion. The recreated Jackson Truss Covered Bridge was opened in 2000 on part of the old National Road near Cameo Vineyards and the Cumberland County Fairgrounds in Greenup.

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Greenup preserves, celebrates its downtown porches