I love this picture for a little detail that high-resolution found -- a gaggle of happy people on a street-corner, caught in a moment. Thank you Shorpy for this!

Notcom mentioned the hotel on the left.

My dad's family was from nearby Owensboro, and for many years, one of his brothers was a permanent resident in the Seelbach. I have early memories of the (Grand!) lobby and dining there as a child, whenever we would visit Louisville.
I wonder if the hotel's History books remember Junius Woolfolk Bell.

The hotel, now the Seelbach Hilton, has a long and interesting history, and had just opened in May of 1905, giving us a tighter time window for the photo.

Well worth a visit, should one be in the city, but in the meantime, check out their History page: https://seelbachhilton.com/seelbach-experience/

You'll be able to name-drop figures such as:
Al Capone, Lucky Luciano, Dutch Schultz, George Remus, and F. Scott Fitzgerald, who, taken with Remus, adapted him as Jay Gatsby!

My financial advisor was located in the Starks Building for a number of years and my visits might have totaled five trips or so. I really didn’t know the history as such, although “Starks Building” was a very familiar name.

One time I slipped down the hallway to look for a men’s. Found one, opened it up and it was a cubbyhole sized room, about a third the size of a closet. Wide enough to take a urinal, deep enough to hang a door and that was it. You don’t wash hands! Good Lord, 19th century relief stations!

However, just stepping foot into the building itself made you realize this was something from another time, with a quality and architectural atmosphere not found in today’s construction.

The church would be demolished and replaced with the Starks Building only 7 years after this photo.

[Parts of those columns were used to construct its next church, which still stands. - Dave]

Within a year Soon this would become Louisville's 100% Corner, but Stewart's hasn't yet risen on the near right. At left the Seelbach Hotel, and beyond, the Atherton Building, eventually to become Selman's, but here occupied by a variety of furniture stores. Whether it would need to wait further for the Starks Building (see above) to complete the tranformation is perhaps open to debate, but whatever end date we select the speed of the process was rapid (as indicated by the clipping below).

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When Mr. Atherton purchased the Walnut Street Baptist Church - a mere six years earlier - the corner was still domestic in scale.