[1][2][3] His original ideas resulted in the creation of the Fund for the Arts[4] and weekly “beef sessions” in which residents could talk to him and top city officials directly.

He was a poor student in his time at Male High School and the University of Louisville but graduated with a law degree in 1930 and joined his father's firm.

In 1932, Kentucky's Democratic party leaders endorsed Farnsley to be one of nine nominees for the House of Representatives in state-wide elections, but he came up 2,000 votes short in a bitterly contested primary.

There, he declared himself a Physiocrat and wrote papers arguing that Enlightenment thought had been inspired by the ideas of Confucius via the Chinese Rites controversy, and that fascism was rooted in the philosophy of Plato.

After a chaotic two weeks in which “almost every Democrat who ever figured in public print”[12] in Louisville was considered to be mayor, the Board voted 6 to 5 for Farnsley over Tom Graham, a banker who was backed by the party organization.

Under his administration, city officials developed the plans for what would become the Watterson Expressway, I-65 and I-64 in Louisville and cleared an area directly west of Downtown that contained many dwellings lacking electricity and running water.

Upon his departure from office, the Courier-Journal wrote the following about Farnsley:[18] To some he is “brilliant,” “a man with ideas,” or maybe even a “touch of genius.” To others he has been in at least some instances “foolish,” “impetuous,” even a “screwball” or worse.

[22] In his later years, Farnsley tried to promote tourism in the Ohio Valley and was president of the Lost Cause Press, which he had founded to reproduce historic documents on microfilm.

Farnsley was noted for wearing string bow ties, and, in his earlier career, a broad array of eccentric clothing inspired by the antebellum South.