Mile Stones Of The Past? Threatened In The Future?

I received an email from a friend just after the work on the Woodland Triangle began. He was concerned that they crew replacing the sidewalk along High St has also removed the historic white milestone. It was something that both of us thought would be a travesty.

When I drove home that night, I went out of my way to check and it is still there. This time luck was on our side.

There is a description in George Ranck's History of Lexington,of a survey ordered by the town's trustees in the spring of 1791 and taken verbatim from the Trustee's Book.

"Surveyed by order of the trustees of the town of Lexington, 204 acres of land, including the court-house of Fayette county in the center, in a circular figure of two miles in diameter. Beginning at A (a point), one mile southeast from the said court-house, at a post on the northeast side of the road, running thence south 56 (degrees) west 125 poles to a post crossing Tate's creek road at 85 poles;”

The Lexington Press, in their edition of May 5, 1871, reported that the City council proposed to mark the city boundary with a ring of stones placed 500 feet apart. A week later a crew under the direction of Col. De La Pradele were busy setting the stones to mark the boundaries of City at one mile from Court House. This came just two months after a proposal to make the city limits a square rather that a circle.

Work was still progressing in November of the following year. By 1873 the City Council voted to leave the city boundaries the same and new stones be put up at appropriate distances.

Now, if you take a one mile radius from the old Court House and superimpose it on a map, that point A is almost exactly where Walton Ave intersects E Main St. Following that sweeping arc to the southwest toward E High St., or what would have been called the road to Tate's creek in those days, you will find a white stone set in the ground. It is about 10 to 12 inches to a side and well weathered. It is also one mile from the old Court House.

One mile in the other direction from the Court House on Leestown Rd, just opposite the entrance to the Calvary cemetery, is a similar stone, also set well in the ground and weathered. Neither of these stones have any plaques or markings to tell what they are (or what I suspect them to be.) I believe them to be the two remaining stones from that project of over 140 years ago.

When I spoke to the city's construction manager, overseeing the work at the Woodland Triangle, he had no idea that the stone was even there. I also found out the the city's Division of Historic Preservation was requiring an application for a Certificate of Appropriateness for replacing the sidewalk, even after the work was completed. This is required for all historic overlay zones, yet no one is looking out for a possibly 145 year old stone marker?

Are these the only remaining stones? Have the others been carelessly removed because someone did not know (or care) what they were? It would stand to reason that other stones would appear along the aforementioned arc at 500 foot intervals.

In 1871 the Woodland Park did not exist nor did any of the adjacent neighborhoods and that interval would span approximately half way through the future park. The fall of 1884 saw several crews of men construct a large lake of no more than 3 acres. This lake, called Lake Chenosa, was placed squarely on the city boundary. Surely, someone remembered the boundary stone placement of a dozen years previous so as to avoid them.

By my calculations, a stone 500 feet along the arc would appear near the existing first base dugout structure of the ball-field which occupies the former “lake” site. Approximately twenty or so feet past and ten or so feet behind. I have not been there lately to look for it and it does not show up in any recent aerials. Also, some years ago the Parks maintenance crews reworked that hillside for drainage issues.

It puzzles me as to why these stones, if they are what I think they are, are not identified. This town is so quick to claim anything old as historic and they have rushed to protect items of lesser age. We have even been known to remove major historical artifacts from their original context, thereby diminishing their true worth. This has happened to at least two county boundary markers.

I repeat, I believe that we dodged a travesty recently and I hope that we can prevent it in the future.

The Fading Of Food Access In The Suburbs

I read recently that, according the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) approximately twenty-nine million Americans live in urban and rural food deserts.

That definition means that Lexington residents from low-income neighborhoods have to travel a mile or more to a grocery store. With poverty levels being demonstrated to be growing in suburbs across the country, it could only be a short time until those food deserts become extremely evident here. From what I hear, our planning staff believes that it has already started.

It has long been known that the near north side of Lexington has been home to an almost ever present community of working class poor. There are pockets of more well to do neighborhoods but they are the exception. Many streets which once saw the fine houses of our city's doctors and lawyers or other entrepreneurs are now home to the apartment dwelling, lower class. Our ever mobile elite moved on to the newer subdivisions, chasing that American dream of living “in the country”or acting like it.

Today it is the pockets of poverty which seem to be growing in our cul-de-sac patchwork of subdivisions that we have developed over the last half century or more. Many of them began as “starter homes” under HUD's “236” or “238” programs and actually did allow young families to enter the housing market and become upwardly mobile. Lately, the newer, non programed, version of starter houses appear to be financial traps for new home owners. Their upward mobility is still stuck in the '70s.

Stories abound from some of the better known low income districts of larger cities, where food banks and food pantries see more and more of the newly impoverished. There are more than likely as many right here in Lexington and maybe you know of one or more. Retelling of stories and raising awareness is not a solution, changing what brings on or exacerbates the situation is.

I have long stated that “retail follows the population” and, up until the 1930s and a wide acceptance of zoning, the food market section of retail led in that regard. One of the initial retail establishments in any new residential area was a grocer or butcher. That is why we saw so many corner markets in neighborhoods and often in converted residences.

A while, I chronicled the actions of a retail business in a small part of a narrow wedge of Lexington. It was not complete by any means, but does illustrate what I believe to be a part of our problem. As I pointed out, Kroger Co entered the Lexington market with two stores in 1925, going up against a few local chains like S.A Glass and his 6 or so stores. Kroger had 60 such corner markets in Cincinnati at the time and there was no such thing as a “super market”

Zoning is usually employed to separate noxious uses from neighborhood or other community institutions. The corner grocery, church or barbershop beside a small drug store were the mainstays of neighborhood life, hardly uses that folks wanted to get rid of. To many, that was the embodiment of the small town life they left behind when they moved to town. Sadly, the regimented nature of zoning does not allow the time tested evolution of human interaction having replaced it with something I find hard to explain.

Grocery stores of today are required to fit into a specific “zone” and since those zones will also allow many more uses, some of them noxious, they need to be sited away from the residences that they have historically served. This, I believe, is what has opened the door for food deserts.

One of my favorite scenes from Driving Miss Daisy is where Daisy Werthan's son has hired a chauffeur since she had wrecked her car. Ever the independent woman, Daisy intends to do the weekly shopping alone until she discovers that you need to arrange a cab well in advance and walking to the store or using the streetcar have their own problems. Daisy is a well of widow living in a changing world and yet blind to those changes.

The Driving Miss Daisy story began in the late '40s when going to the grocery, though a special trip, did not involve a large amount of logistics. Store locations at that time were determined by residential units / population in a mile or two radius and the store management knew customer's families by name as well as what they bought. The grocery business in those days was a real service oriented industry, much unlike today.

A grocery superstore of 85, 000 to 200,000 square feet will require the population of 3 to 5 mile radius to make it profitable. In subdivisions containing massive numbers of cul-de-sacs the driving distance could easily be three times that. When neighborhoods like that begin to fall the poverty line our food deserts begin to emerge. Factor in the lack of adequate public transportation and the effect of the food desert grows. It begins to look like we either failed to plan or planned to fail, but we did it to ourselves.

Much of my observations and opinions here have come from growing up in a grocery oriented family. My father was a well known and respected grocery manager/owner during the '40s-'70s. Corporate marketing decisions have replaced the hands-on customer service actions of the old time grocery man and convinced the buying public that it is in their best interest. It is no longer about what is best for the customer but what is best for the corporate bottom line.

In an industry that made more than $600 billion in 2012, the corporate perception is that low-income people don't spend money unless they're at a high enough density, then there's a market. Our easily identified food deserts in the near north side do not approach that density. The National Campaign for Healthy Food Access at The Food Trust says supermarkets stay away because urban settings force them to rethink the shape and size of their stores. I think that we are seeing that with the Kroger on Euclid, but under duress. Operating in low-income areas, the employees who tend to live very nearby are less work-ready and may cost more to train and insure.

On the local front, we have our own group which is active in bringing better food choices to the low income areas. It will also involve teaching the residents of these areas how to make the better choices. Anita Courtney of the Tweens Nutrition and Fitness Coalition has initiated a program which has seen some success in other communities. Here it goes by the name The Good Neighbor Store (GNS) Network. They have realized that small neighborhood stores play an important role in communities and if stores can enhance their business model, it’s good for the community, as well as the store’s bottom line.

Currently there are 2 stores working to become Good Neighbor Stores, all in the East End of Lexington. They are hoping to have grand re-openings this fall:

• Sammy’s Market and Deli at 651 Breckinridge Street on the corner of Breckenridge and Sixth Street
• Pak-N-Save at 503 East Third Street on the corner of Third and Race

The Pak-N-Save will have a new produce cooler, new flooring and new exterior paint and a mural is to be painted on the Race Street side of the store. There are ongoing efforts to engage other inner city corner stores.

It is not all about teaching the inner city youth and their parents. Since we are seeing food deserts develop in our suburban areas also, we need to spread the awareness there. Mrs. Sweeper has related to me an incident which played out before her and to which she could not keep herself apart from. I will let her tell the story,

I came up to the registers and began to stand in line at the Kroger on Richmond Road. “I had a small hand basket of goods.  I believe it was a Friday that I had to work and I was picking up a couple of things for the weekend.  In front of me was a black woman dressed conservatively and wearing a beautiful headscarf in the style that Sephardi women often wear them. (And I myself have done on more than one occasion.) That was what drew my attention at first.

Then I noticed she was in distress, nearly in tears and trying to say something to the cashier. Her English was very poor, she was clearly a recent immigrant. The cashier was not really interested in listening to this woman, she was instead waving a loaf of quality (possibly organic) whole grain bread. The rest of the woman's cart was filled with fresh vegetables and fruits, organic dairy products, and other healthy items – things I buy for my own family on a regular basis.

There was not a single item of junk food in her cart, not a bit of unhealthy processed food. I was almost ashamed of how often we cheat on our “healthy” diet looking at her cart.

The cashier was waving the bread at her and gestured to the healthy organic dairy products and a few other good quality products saying, loudly and rudely, “You can't buy these.”

It took me a few seconds to realize the problem – the woman was using a SNAP card (the program most of us know as food stamps). The card would not take the healthy products. The cashier was telling the woman she would have to pay for the healthy items out of pocket. Total amount was approximately $30.

The woman was scrounging around in her purse at this point, understanding what, if not why.  She said she had no more money. The cashier told her she would take the things off her ticket.

I said, “No, you won't,” or something like that. At this point I was angry, suddenly understanding that this woman's purchase was being rejected because it wasn't crappy low quality food – you know, the stuff they're always griping that poor people buy that makes their kids fat? Well, that stuff is accepted by SNAP. Decent hormone-free chemical-free items aren't, apparently.

The cashier turned to me and said, “She will have to put these back.” And I said again, “No, she won't,” and I reached over with my own credit union debit card and swiped it through the machine before the cashier could complete the action of picking up her hand-scanner to remove the items. As I was putting in my pin number, the cashier said to me in a nasty tone of voice, “you can't do that,”

By now I was pretty much in a spitting rage, but I didn't want to make a scene or embarrass the immigrant woman any further than she very clearly already was, so all I replied was something like “Yes I can, and I did. Give the woman her receipt.” At a loss as to what to do about it, the cashier did as I told her.

She then rang up my few items with me glaring at her. She didn't speak to me again. That's probably a good thing, because I am a bit high-strung by nature and it's hard to say what would have come out of my mouth. It's not the cashier's fault the system is set up to benefit corporations who make sure their processed products are on SNAP's accepted product list. I'm sure plenty of money changes hands to make sure that happens.

I imagine it is also likely that the SNAP administrators put some sort of cap on product prices to make sure that quality products don't qualify. After all, apparently, the poor don't deserve organic, hormone-free, chemical free products.

For some reason, we'd rather pay higher prices for obesity, high blood pressure, heart disease, diabetes, and other costs conveniently covered by Medicaid but entirely preventable through eating healthy food instead of the processed crap being foisted off on the poor by SNAP.

As I have said, I am the son of a grocery man. He saw his job as providing the best product for the best price and doing it as a service to his fellow man. I cannot see this ever happening in his store.

When Change Comes To The Neighborhood

One of the downsides of the steady progression new business opportunities, otherwise known as re-gentrification, in presently lower income residential parts of town is the impact of parking created by non-local clientele. It is evidencing itself along Jefferson St and, to some extent, North Limestone beyond Sixth St. On site off street parking is at a premium and on street parking can create neighborliness as well as safety issues.

Though I am not a beer drinker, I have been to the West Sixth Brewing building on several occasions and some of them were real “events”. Their expanding scope and number of symbiotic tenants in addition to other outside developments point to the need for more parking in the area, hopefully without raising the ire of local residents.

Let us hope that they will not follow examples from the past.

The University Plaza shopping center was built in the early '70s, just about the time that campus and city planners were looking at ways to relieve the central campus of through traffic by building wider new streets.

Cooper Dr was being connected, the Kirwan-Blanding towers complex built and University Dr was to continue on, bisecting the Clifton Heights/Aylesford subdivisions and following a widened Woodland Avenue to Main St. The neighborhood was declining and the University had its sights set on expanding eastward.

Euclid Avenue, and it continuation The Avenue of Champions, was to connect the growing Tates Creek Pike area with the then proposed roadway through Davis Bottoms and on toward Newtown Pike at its intersection at West Main St.

The intersection of a widened Euclid and a probably four-lane Woodland Avenue appeared to be prime real estate for a commercial center which would only grow larger with the added student population. The North – South Expressway was set to slice between the campus and downtown, Urban Renewal was moving ahead along Main and Vine and the “muscle car” age of the automobile was powering along. Nobody even saw the “gas crisis” of “73 until OPEC became a household word.

The University Plaza was also the site of a small dining/disco named the Library Lounge. A sedate restaurant during the day and a tight packed, meat market, dance club at night. It was a place that you could take your parents to lunch when they were in town, then tell them that your were spending your evenings at the library – implying that you were studying.

The limited parking, which is no better today, meant that patrons would park some 1 ½ to 2 blocks away and not blocking residential driveways was not always a top priority. Towing services sometimes had get creative in order to remove vehicles. Parking problems, the perceived need to drive there and the waning of disco led to the demise of the Library, while the roadway expansions faded into just memories.

There were numerous contentious encounters between the neighbors and the University Plaza/Library owners which don't seem to be occurring as yet on the North side of town. I doubt that many residents can fully comprehend the effect that the new BCTC campus will have on the neighborhood or what increased business will do to North Limestone and I am leaving out the concept of removing the one-way status.

Today's mass transit environment is vastly different that the '70s and even the taxi service is much improved. I also believe that efforts are being made to keep all parties involved in what is happening, yet still I can see evidence that elements of neighborhood resistance are present.

When dining with the family last Friday at County Club, I again noticed that the parking lot of the Pilgrim Baptist Church was gated and locked and streams of autos cruised by looking for a space to park. It is certainly within the purview of the church to control their property but to some it looks like an opportunity for revenue enhancement. Maybe this is will sort itself out over time as it has in many other locations and become a benefit for all concerned.

A Question About Parking

I believe that it would surprise most folks to know that a machine, developed nearly ninety years ago, was first used to ease the parking situation of the day. The hated parking meter.

There are some in my own family who will not think about venturing downtown simply because they feel that finding a place to park is too big of a chore with which to deal. However simple the task to accomplish, finding a parking spot is much more difficult. Between the traffic on the one way streets and the supposedly endless searching for a close parking space, they would rather go to the mall. I think that they typify the opinion of many in the neighborhoods outside New Circle Rd. and a good many within.

Conventional thought of the past 50 years or so has been that it is no problem just to hop in the car and run to the store. You could park at the front door, quickly get in and get out and be home in no time flat. The roads to the store are now wider and carry more cars, the parking lots are bigger as are the stores but it still does not cost you to make the trip. It is always free parking, for you.

The rise of the automobile in America led to more than the freedom of the open road, it led to chaos in the streets of eastern cities which were not designed for them. Cities were built to accommodate rather than integrate cars. According to Kerry Segrave in “Parking Cars in America, 1910-1945”, The idea in force in American law at the start of the 20th century, that thoroughfares were for the movement of traffic—with certain specific exceptions such as the loading and unloading of goods and passengers—gave way fairly quickly to the idea that took root in the popular mind that parking of vehicles on the street was a right and not a privilege. In response, ill-conceived regulations helped cement the concept of free parking as a public good across America, fueling our dependence on automobiles.

Unlimited free parking, without legal restrictions to encourage turnover, soon led to commonplace traffic jams on many city streets, complete with double parking, traffic at a crawl and employees hogging the prime spots all day. I doubt that it helped when turning movements at intersections, with or without traffic control, was added into the equation. Thus the parking meter was devised.

In 1933, Carl C Magee, a Oklahoma newspaper man and entrepreneur, engaged two engineering professors at Oklahoma State University to design and build a control devise. Two years later, Holger George Thuesen and Gerald A. Hale had their first working parking meter, the Black Maria. Magee, having been named to Oklahoma City's Chamber of Commerce Traffic Committee, chose the corner of First Street and Robinson Avenue as a starting point and installed a series of meters along a whole block face. The date was July 16, 1935. Lexington would wait ten more years, July 22, 1946 for their first meters and thus proving Mark Twain wrong.

Each devise cost of $23 apiece but were installed gratis with the understanding that their initial capital cost would be repaid by the five-cent hourly rate, after which the city would reap all parking fees.

Ironically, the world's first parking ticket occurred about one month after the Oklahoma installation when the Rev. C.H. North received a citation while he had gone inside a grocery store to get change for the meter. The judge dismissed the case.

Regardless, the parking did its job and business picked up so dramatically in the first week that the other side of the street demanded that they also have meters installed. Word spread quickly and so did the meters. Lexington, when we did get meters (see above), made a gutsy move and installed 700 meters, on a trial basis.

The reported first days collection of parking meter coins amounted to $451.47 and by the end of 1948 revenues totaled $64,708 for the year.

How did this apparent panacea for all of parking's ills go from being loved in the late '30s to being basically despised two decades later? Can the same thing be said for the stoplights too?

As towns became cities and urban centers, more street space was filled with the parked cars rather than moving ones. Unlike our larger east coast communities, most city's leaders didn’t turn to mass transit as a solution to the increased congestion, but found it to be a convenient excuse to remove what efficient commuter tracks and inner-city rail systems that were in place. Lexington's residents who bought in the neighborhoods designed around the streetcar soon found themselves needing an automobile and a place to put it at home. All of this right in the middle of the Great Depression.

The resulting increase in traffic and its need for parking should have enticed any enterprising property owner to build multi-level, covered parking spaces, much like the older livery stables which could be found dotting downtown at the turn of the century. The building of and maintenance of parking garages can be an expensive proposition, which is why many property owners today look to the local government for assistance.

Probably the best reason for the reversal in thought is “... decades of poor meter implementation, inane off-street parking requirements, and [a] technological stasis [which] slowly turned our city streets into a driver’s nightmare.” according to Hunter Oatman-Stanford in a Collector's Weekly article from January of this year. This could be as a simple as overuse of the meters or just poor placement, which when it did not work as expected was supplemented by equally bad implementations of parking requirements. In typical American response to these ill-conceived regulations, drivers soon began to see the concept of free parking as a public good.

I personally believe that government should not be in the parking business. Provide for their employees and customers, like private enterprise, but that is as far as it should go. Instead of NOT providing free parking, how about encouraging FREE public transit..

Donald Shoup, professor of Urban Planning at UCLA, explains that minimum parking requirements “led planners and developers to think that parking is a problem only when there isn’t enough of it.” All across America today's legally required lots are, more often than not, half-empty since they are designed for the maximum peak use. Parking is kind of like dark matter in the universe, we know it’s there, but we don’t have any idea how much there is.” Today parking lots cover more of urban America than any other single-use of space and it is estimated that the U.S. has as many as eight parking spaces per car.

As the suburban lots are underused for typically short length stays and the downtown spaces are overused for typically day long stays, where is the balance point? When will we begin to mandate “right-sized” parking for particular parts of town rather than continuing a “one size fits all” approach? I can see the developing Design Excellence Guidelines having some input in this regard, but they need to be for all of Lexington and not just the B-2 family of zones downtown.

So, what is lacking in the way of downtown parking? The quantity or quality of inexpensive parking? Or just the lack of free parking where you want it? I think that there should be a definite private participation in our structured parking solutions

The right sizing of parking to our development types and locations along with better public transit access should play a more important in the success of downtown retail, entertainment, offices and residency. But public perceptions will always trail the reality of most situations and as more Millinenials adjust their perceptions, I think that we will see the need for downtown parking wane.

Now, if I were in total control of downtown parking; For the visitor, it would be visible, For the local, it would be there but hidden and Public transit would make it superfluous.

A Hotel Could Lead To Transformation

I have been following the recent controversy about the proposed hotel near the corner of Southland Dr and Nicholasville Rd and have bee amused by the commentary.

It seems that the nearby residents wish to prevent what some call progress by claiming that they want to keep their backyards “private”. Folks all over town are building “privacy” fences in neighborhoods where two story homes look directly into the adjacent yard and, in some cases, those on adjacent blocks if the hillsides are steep enough. I have no idea what these people do in their backyards that they need to be so private, but it may be either risky (or risque).

The problem that I have is with the people in the neighborhood on the south side of Southland, well out of visual range and even earshot. Why is it that folks don't want to try to improve certain locations when just a little teamwork will do wonders.

My first memories of the intersection involve the building which houses the Denny's restaurant. It was an Independent Grocers Association (IGA) market when I was a small lad, the last vestige of town and the beginning of the narrow two lane road to Nicholasville. The family took trips the the locally owned “Bird & Animal Forest”, located about midway between the two communities, on summer Sundays. It was a crude attempt at a petting zoo but we enjoyed it.

My father's friend had a few acres and a roadside motel, some horses and ,I think, a pay lake. I searched for it some time back on some old aerial photos and actually found it. Today, that spot is occupied by the eastern half of the New Circle Road interchange. What a major change.

Southland Dr., as many know, was built as an alternate route to bypass the railroad crossing of Rosemont Gardens. The early drawing call it the “Southern U pass” since it incorporated a bridge to separate the auto traffic from the Southern Railroad trains. Waller Avenue had yet to be extended beyond the tracks toward Harrodsburg Rd. so the only access across the tracks was Virginia Ave., Rosemont and Stone Rd.(now Pasadena).

Commercial development exploded in this area during the '60s, thus the new residential subdivisions were required to provide sidewalks but the older “main drag”, where the shopping was designated, was exempt. Folks in those days hopped in the car just to go to the end of the block and who wants to look out for the pedestrians who should not be there. Southland Dr was not a neighborhood shopping center, it drew from all over the south end of Lexington. In many cases it still functions that way today.

Over the years this area has added some newer and larger uses and is no longer “out on the edge of town”. We should be looking to bring this intersection up to the sense of an urban retail corridor. One way to do that is to remove the types of uses which perpetuate the parking habits of the now aging “baby boomers”. Restaurants in Chevy Chase can succeed with their doors opening to the sidewalk and parking in the rear, so is Southland Dr area that much worse.

What I see, in this location, is an excellent opportunity to enhance this visual aspect of the intersection and allow the neighborhood to metamorphose into a vibrant entryway to the Southland experience. The proposed mid-rise hotel can begin to fill the space with active evening traffic but it still need desirable support uses like full-service sit-down restaurants and up-scale retail which can draw the neighborhood folks without making them get in their cars.

Gas stations are still a fact of life but some of the newer ones have found that being situated on an extremely congested corner with turn lanes presents unwanted access nightmares. At most times of the day one can only approach the existing Shell station from the southbound lanes and exit with a right turn only movement. No service work is done on site so the need for the massive paved area adds to the water runoff which the neighbors are so vocal about.

View Larger Map

Now, visualize if you can, imagine a structure built along the lines of the former Taylor Tire station at the corner of Old East Vine and Grand Blvd. It has been re-purposed as a retail complex, but it sits so close to the street that it has that cozy feel. A new building, placed similarly and perhaps with wing along both major streets, could accommodate fuel pumps streetside and in the back, address the street with a pleasing facade and allow for plantings or the like.

Continuing the streetscape on toward the donut shop and at an equal setback, the atmosphere becomes conducive to pedestrian traffic as well as auto. At present, Lextran does not use this section of Southland Dr but this streetscape will lend itself to adding a stop in the future. Replacing the existing Denny's with a more fitting facility would also do wonders for the area.

I honestly believe that even the hotel could be placed a little bit farther off the adjacent residential if the corner was redeveloped as a whole. Even the existing car wash could be accommodated in a pleasing manner.

The neighbors probably need to step back a bit, think about how they can get something a little closer to what they desire and work with the developer to give everybody a win-win scenario to shoot for. It can be for everybody's best interest.

Let me know what you feel.

Deja Vu Anyone?

The city government is now looking at something new for their employees, a fresh fruit and vegetable cart in the lobby of the Government Center.

Building on an idea used by the High St Y, Councilman Steve Kay is circulating a survey of the city's staff in order to gauge their interest. Kay, a "Y" member, apparently has recognized that the idea has merit.

I am unfamiliar with the extent of variety or the quantity of the offerings on this produce cart, but the survey indicates that they will be those items that are “in season”. A selection of locally grown, and hopefully organic produce at reasonable prices could be another part of the new wellness aspect of the revamped health care package being promoted.

The first floor of the Government Center has become a fairly busy place under the Gray administration, what with the Mayors office being moved into the former ballroom. It remains to be seen what will happen during the holiday season which used to include many social functions for the staff.

A primary concern may be for the vegetable cart to occupy a lesser used corner of the lobby, but what if the response is so overwhelming that the offerings, in order to match the purchases, grow to an unmanageable size. I assume that it will be first come - first served, but will they park the delivery truck out back just for storage?

What if it goes beyond the fruits and vegetables? What else can the city offer to sell to its staff (or anyone else for that matter)? Will the first floor turn into an urban market? I recall seeing a photo of the old City offices before they moved to the now departed Municipal Building on Walnut St (now N Martin Luther King). See it here. The old Market house was on the ground floor while the City government ran out of the second floor. It was located on the corner of S. Lime and Vine St (opposite the current Phoenix Building) and built before the eastern portion of Vine st was constructed in the early '20s.

Maybe what was old is new again.

What Is In A Name?

Lexington now has a new street. One that has been in the planning stages for many years and has been called many names over those years. This street is now named for a person that few have any knowledge of and few places where one can look for information about him. His name was nominated, vetted and voted upon by the public, in an online poll, and garnered over half the votes cast. Yet the Herald-Leader says that little is known about him and they had no part in finding any information on him prior to the vote. I find it interesting that so many citizens could have made such an informed decision without the local newspaper.

This is the same newspaper which describes the first segment of the road(Phase IV) as running from West Main St. to Versailles Rd. and labels the photos with the current terminus as the intersection with Maxwell. Actually W. High St. is the intersection and Maxwell intersects a little closer to town and W High St. changes to Versailles Rd on the other side of the bridge at Angliana Ave.

I have followed the local controversies of our governments street naming or address committee and the troubles of naming or renaming streets due to problems(or perceived problems) and the wish to honor an fallen public servant. Then there is the issue of letting the public vote on naming a new roadway segment where very few realize that a problem could arise from failure to do so. To fully explain all the implications of how addresses are determined and assigned would take far more space than a single blog post and few readers would be willing to wade(slog) through it, so I won't attempt to give it a shot. What I will do is tell what I know about how some streets got their names.

Lexington started out with some very simple street names and none of them were named after anybody or any event, just some simple names on a grid. There was Main St which ran parallel to the Town Branch Creek and a commons area on either side of the creek which included the site of the original blockhouse and fortifications. What were called "in lots" surrounded both Main and the commons and from there north were "out lots". The streets parallel to Main had the numerical designations of Second through Seventh St. except for a short section of road called Short St, how odd. The perpendicular streets began with the Cross Street, (or Main Cross Street on some maps) right by the blockhouse and on either side of that were Mill(on the east) and Spring(on the west). If you try real hard, I bet you can tell what was the distinctive feature of each. Beyond these were Upper and Lower Streets with Upper on the upstream(east) side and Lower on the downstream(west) side. The eastern end of the "in lots" had a cross street named Mulberry, which ran from Hill St across Main and north to the extent of the "out lots". Hill St took its name from the fact that it traversed the crest of the hill on the south side of the Town Branch. The last two streets on the original plat were Walnut and Back, with Back being the farthest from the blockhouse or commons area and thus out back of everything else. See, simple names

But streets don't stop at the edge of town, they become roads that lead to the outside world. Main St led northwest along the Town Branch toward the Kentucky River and points westward, or you could go south east, back toward the Cumberland Gap. Cross St went north toward the Ohio and the settlements that would sprout in that direction, but it also went south to James Harrod's station and fort. Mulberry led out toward Bryan's station and on up the long used indian trail to the Ohio River and a spot that became known as Limestone because of the quality of rock in the area. As Lexington grew and the wilderness became subdued, people began to develop dwelling places and farms on the "out lots" and they saw the roads bring folks and take folks away, but mostly they saw the roads bring commerce.

Cross St and Main, being the center of town activity, probably saw the most commercial traffic and the width of Cross was increased to handle it. Newcomers from "back east" felt that it needed a name befitting its size and it became Broadway. Anyone building a fine house found the need to obtain their foundation stones from Limestone, Ky. and Mulberry St. started to be called the Limestone Rd.. Limestone, Ky. became Maysville and the road was then called the Maysville Turnpike, but it was still officially Mulberry in town. It took until 1887 for the City Council to change the name to Limestone St. and that was finally shortened to Limestone.

Imagine, if you can, that most of the homes and related activities occurring within what we now call our downtown core, from High St to Short and Limestone to Broadway. This is the very area that we have redone the streetscape and pavilion. With the influx of new residents in the early 1800s, many of them lawyers come to settle the land survey and boundary disputes, new housing developments sprang up as the farmers moved farther out into the fertile fields and the “out lots” became the estates of the wealthy.

The passageways to reach these estates, mostly unpaved, sometimes took their names from those who lived along them or their destinations. The 14 “out lots” on the south side of Hill St. abutted the property of John Maxwell and, as the lots began to be sub-divided, the roadway took the name of Maxwell St. Initially running from approximately Merino St to just east of Mulberry(Limestone), the street was extended to Woodland in the early 1900s.

The religious needs of the community were satisfied with meeting houses until the various congregations could build proper houses of worship. Several of these were located on the closest group of out lots and just north of Short St and were connected by a new roadway running parallel to Short and bisecting the lots. That street is now named Church St

Mill St was extended north along the west side of out lots “F” and #6, ending at Third St and a corresponding street was cut from the east side of the same lots. This new street led directly to the public square on which was located the school house and later the county court house. Since the days that court was in session drew so many to town, there was usually much trading and selling in a public market and this new street took the name of Market St.

These are the early names as found on the maps up until 1835. The naming and the reasons for naming get more interesting after that.

Lost Lexington Subdivisions 1

Tonight, I am posting an article that I have been holding for a while. It demonstrates the ongoing situation around the UK campus

When I started this blog , I intended to recount some of the histories of various subdivisions and neighborhoods and over the past months I have been distracted by other development related topics. Today I wish to get back to one of my original topics, one which I will call Lost Lexington Subdivisions. These are platted areas or subdivisions which have been swallowed up by other institutions or public works projects and very little or no vestiges of the original area can be recognized. One of the first of these is an area I encountered as a ten or eleven year old visiting friends from school, Clifton Heights.

The beginnings of Clifton Heights predate me by a considerable margin. Consider this newspaper snippet below:

"Clifton Heights"
Lexington will have another boom on hand within a few days. A land company has been incorporated under the title of the Clifton Heights Land Company, and has purchased one hundred and six acres of land near the suburbs of the city and fronting on Rose Street.
Lexington Leader March, 5 1890

Right beside this was an advertisement of the incorporation of the development company and signed by the corporation president, Louis Straus. Straus was a well known businessman and civic leader, who with his brother Gus, had operated a clothing and tailoring business since the mid 1860’s. The land was belonged to Oliver P. Alford, a local horseman, a brother of R.F. Alford (a member of Morgan’s raiders) and uncle to Mitchell C. Alford, the Lieutenant Governor. O.P. and M.C. Alford were also incorporators. The rest of the incorporation signers were J.E. Keller, President of the Chamber of Commerce and Realtor (moved to Louisville in 1891), C.F. Simonds, owner of the Phoenix Hotel until he sold it to his son John, Watts Parker, an attorney who at times was City Attorney, Master Commissioner, County Judge, and Circuit Judge, and Charles Seelbach of the Louisville hotel family. About 2 weeks later the Lexington Leader had this to say

"In a flurry"
…Although but a short time has elapsed since the Clifton Heights Company made their large purchase of suburban property, there are many persons who want lots in that subdivision. …In the first place Rose Street will be widened ten feet from Maxwell Street to the intersection of the Nicholasville Pike. In the next place the first avenue, running parallel with Maxwell Street, will be one hundred feet wide
Lexington Leader March, 23 1890

The above appears to describe the Aylesford development more than the Clifton area in its reference to a street “one hundred feet wide”. That better describes Euclid Ave. than any other street paralleling Maxwell. Even so, there are not lots being platted or built upon at this time only desire and great interest in the subdivision as this excerpt from more than two years later shows:

Clifton Heights is to be the scene of extensive improvements. Brick and macadam streets are to be put down and handsome houses are to be erected this fall.
Lexington Leader August, 21 1892

These were heady days in the America of the 1890’s. Prosperity was around every corner or so the political leaders claimed, even though 1% of the people controlled more than the other 99%. There was a bump in the road coming called the Panic of 1893.

The 1880s had seen a period of remarkable economic expansion in the United States. In time, the expansion became driven by speculation, much like the "tech bubble" of the late 1990s, except that the preferred industry was railroads. Railroads were vastly over-built, and many companies tried to take over many others, seriously endangering their own stability so to do.... As concern of the state of the economy worsened, people rushed and caused bank runs. The credit crunch rippled through the economy.
Growthology.org http://www.growthology.org/growthology/2008/09/1893.html

Louis Straus took ill in 1898 and as his illness wore on the prospects of the new subdivision diminished with his health. The Clifton Heights lots were advertised for auction and sold in May of 1899 and the newspaper had this to say.

"To build at once"
The purchasers of lots in Clifton Heights have already commenced arrangements to build and today witnessed several loads of lumber and other building material hauled out there. Mr. J. W. Hendricks, the well known contractor and builder, was the first to begin work. He will put up a pretty cottage and others will follow suit at once.
Lexington Leader May, 16 1899

Clifton Heights was set, as its name implies, up the hill of Rose St. from Euclid Ave. and had a fine view of the campus of the State College of Kentucky and its agricultural farm. The first plat was recorded in May of 1899 and encompassed 45 acres or so bounded on the west by Rose St., the east by Woodland Av., the south by the Ag farm and the north by the un-platted portion of the former Alford farm (soon to be the Aylesford Subdivision). Three interior streets and a network of alleyways served the 130 parcels so that no lot required a break in the curb to access the property. Roughly half of the development was in the City proper which in that day was described by a circle, I mile in radius, centered on the county court house.

The property had two bodies of water just outside the City limit which may have been natural and, strangely located at just about the highest point for several hundred feet around. These water bodies became features of the primary residential street which bore the name of the development, Clifton Ave. Seventy seven of the 130 lots faced or had a good view of these ponds and were most likely the prime lots of the entire subdivision. Clifton Ave ran east from Rose to Woodland and paralleled the other residential street, Columbia Ave. Connecting these two main avenues and proceeding north from the larger of the ponds, across Columbia and then toward the Alford property was Linden Ave.

Approximately 5 years later, when the Aylesford subdivision was platted, there was no connection to the existing Linden Ave. and any hope of extension was dashed by naming the only possible candidate, for the new subdivision. To be fair, it can be said that there is a steep incline and the existence of a considerable stream along the property line dividing the two developments. Due to this disconnect the name of Linden Ave was changed to Pennsylvania Ave. sometime after 1904.

As noted before, alleyways served all lots from the rear. Two of these alleys ran adjacent to the north and south property lines and , in the case of the northern one, proved to be less than successful in that it was parallel to the creek and along the toe of the hill making it quite inefficient for lot access. I believe that for this reason, portions of 17 of the 22 lots on the north side of Columbia making use (or trying to) of this alley were further subdivided into Dixie Court, in 1923, (see image at left) and Pennsylvania Court sometime later. Dixie Ct. plat labels this alley as “unused”.

The 1907 Sanborn Insurance map shows that 8 houses had been built on the north side of Columbia while more than 2/3s of the south side built up and a clear majority of all lots on Clifton occupied with housing. Commercial uses are also creeping into the area to serve the residents. The 1934 version shows some lot consolidations and all but a few built out with no increase in commercial intrusion, still the lots on the north of Columbia Ave show little use and further aides their need to re-subdivide.

It is not surprising that the owners of homes in Clifton Heights soon began to let rooms to college students who had come to Lexington to go to school. In 1902, one such student unfortunately died of undisclosed causes at the home of J.H. Hendricks of 432 Clifton Ave. The State College had been admitting women since 1880, but there were no dormitories for women at the time. J.H. Hendricks was the father of John W. and Thomas A. Hendricks, two well known contractors, noted for building both the Union Station downtown and the Queen & Crescent station on S. Broadway. J.H. and his wife Bettie were in their 70’s and would have been prime candidates for housing out of town co-eds.

In the early years the residents of Clifton Heights probably mirrored any other new subdivision, with the up and coming and the regular working class families. Some were inventive, such as Robert C. Hall , who was granted a patent on a fibre breaking machine, and Peter Geiser, who installed at State College one of the Geiser combination smoke consumers, which he invented and patented, By 1912, Geiser claimed more than half a dozen patents to his name. There were the well known and the little known, the entrepreneurs and the salesmen, the academic and the manual laborers all mixed in the residential structure of the area.

I noted before about the ponds, or as some called them “lakes”, it appears that someone did not take kindly to the beauty of the water features and in the early hours of a May weekend of 1906 some person, or persons, used dynamite and shovels to cut a number of trenches through the embankment, thus permitting the body of water to escape until there is not enough left to dignify it with even the name of a pond. We do know that the damage was repaired from later press reports and it was not until 1947 that it was finally drained for good. The year 1913 had many comments about the ponds, or at least the larger one, as February brought very cold weather and the ice skating was said to be the best in town. March of that year a reflective piece about the hidden beauty of the pond that would be the memories of a future time, was printed by the Lexington Leader. And October, the news brought a tale of what has been a State College (and then University ) staple for decades, the tug of war contest over the pond.

At the close of a three minutes struggle, the doughty Sophomores of State University overpowered the Freshmen students Tuesday afternoon, drawing many of the lower classmen and the large steel cable through the Clifton Heights pond. Many of the Freshies who were not pulled through the water bravely plunged in the cold water and swam safely to the opposite shore.
Lexington Leader October, 15 1913

Even after the pond was drained the University students, especially the fraternities and sororities had “mud bowl” flag football games and tug o wars in the grassy field that was the bottom of the pond.

Along with people, services came to the new subdivision. In July 1907 a new florist shop was announced and September brought the establishment of a branch of the Library in someone’s home and just two weeks later a second location in another’s home. Clearly the residents wished to be well read. I did find one curious news excerpt from 1908;

"New park"
Mayor Skain and Superintendent W. M. Bateman drove out to Clifton Heights, on South Rose Street, Monday morning, to take a look at that section of the city and consider its capabilities for a driving park. The result of their inspection was that they came away thoroughly convinced that Clifton Heights will make a fine resort for those who go driving.
Lexington Leader June, 16, 1908

I am unaware of just what a “driving park” is, or of what it consists, but I do feel that in the early years of the automotive age, when few families could possess an automobile, it may have had more to do with horses and carriages than autos.

Other services were being requested by the residents, an extension of the streetcar line from its southeastern most point, at Maxwell and Woodland, southward to serve Aylesford, Clifton Heights and the Chautauqua Woods/Columbia Heights areas. Over one hundred residents met to discuss and request this service but the extension was never done. The mayor did propose and recommend some improvements as shown here;

Plans for extensive street improvements in the Clifton addition, beyond Aylesford, were discussed and ordered advertised for by the Board of Public Works upon the recommendation of Mayor Skain Tuesday morning. These include new streets, sidewalks and sewers out Woodland to Columbia Avenue, along Columbia Avenue to Rose street and down Rose to Euclid avenue in Aylesford.
Lexington Leader September, 14 1909

This may have meant the repaving of the streets and sidewalks or the paving for the first time, as referenced here.

"'Worst street'"
As the result of a message from residents of Columbia avenue, requesting that their street be taken into consideration as being among those most thickly laden with mud and the least improved, an inspection visit was made Saturday afternoon by a Leader representative.
Lexington Leader March, 3 1907

I don’t know.

Recreational services for the children were promised in 1916 and land deeded to the City in the summer that included the Clifton Pond. A playground opened in 1919, in the depression created by draining the smaller pond, with some fanfare. Two years later a 14 year-old local youth drown in the pond and it appears that there was some effort to close the park, since a petition of the neighbors was circulated an given to the City. The park stayed open. In August of 1930 the park played host to a circus, arranged by the Lexington Civic League, as the big event to close out their final week of operating the playgrounds in the city. It was well attended as approximately 6,000 people were estimated to be there and, as with any circus, there was a parade through town.

Clifton Heights figured in the controversy of being annexed into the City in that not all of the property was originally included, as detailed above. Below we see how it affected the area.

City limits extension bill goes into effect June 13th, extending limits of Lexington ½ mile in each direction.
Lexington Herald March, 13 1906

The residents of Woodland, Chautauqua Woods, Columbia Heights, Clifton Heights and some other smaller subdivisions found themselves in danger of being annexed into a city, in which they had no say as to representation. Woodland was the most vocal as they had the greater number of wealthy, influential inhabitants and they explored the idea of creating their own city government.

"Initial steps taken"
Resident of that portion of Woodland, beyond the city limits who have had under consideration the advisability of organizing a new township of the sixth class for the purpose of avoiding annexation to the city of Lexington, in accordance with the city extension bill, recently passed by the Legislature, mention of which was made in Sunday's Leader, held a meeting Tuesday night at which decided action was taken toward carrying out the proposed project.
Lexington Leader March, 14 1906

Due to their population they would have been a city of the sixth class but the area would be booming in the next few years. Chautauqua Woods, with its smaller, denser cottage style housing, would be platted and built in the next three years. Columbia Heights, Current Addition, L. B. Shouse Addition and others in the few years after that.

Taxation without representation"
Taxation without Representation. That is the trick sought to be turned by those who are shuffling the political cards at the expense of the thousands of good citizens who live and own property in the suburbs that are to be annexed to Lexington by an extension of the city limits. The Leader has learned from several sources that a scheme is on foot to postpone the extension of the city limits until after Tuesday November 6, next, when it is proposed to nominate State and municipal officers on the same day as the Congressional election, in which event all of the residents of the section to be annexed will be shut out of the city primary election . . .
Lexington Leader May, 27 1906

City leadership sought to increase revenue while denying responsibility at the ballot box to a large population of influential citizens.

"Official survey"
By the middle of next week the official survey of the Woodland district will be complete and an ordinance providing for its annexation to the city of Lexington, as an integral part of the municipal corporation will be introduced before the General Council at the first regular meeting in July. Matters in connection with the first step towards territorial extension, that expansion which is hoped will induce the "Greater Lexington" so universally sought, have reached that stage where decisive action is in sight.
Lexington Leader June, 24 1906

The surveys progressed through the next weeks with negotiations and lawsuits (Pepper Distillery on Versailles Rd) to the point that the expansion was not a true ½ mile in all directions but an irregular shape. I have not found a map of the exact annexation yet though I am still looking. By the end of August the deed had been done and in the words of the Commissioners, a greater Lexington accomplished.

"'Greater Lexington'"
"Greater Lexington" is now a fact. When the residents of the outlying districts awakened from their slumbers Friday morning they were full-fledged citizens of the city of Lexington for all purposes under the law. Retiring Thursday night they went in sleep in Fayette county, but awakened in the city of Lexington, in that the General Council met Thursday night in special session and by unanimous vote adopted the annexation ordinance.
Lexington Leader August, 31 1906

Then the troubles began. The easy part was finished and the hard part lay ahead

"Hogs must be removed"
One of the unpleasant circumstances attending the extension of the city limits by the recent annexation ordinance is that many of those brought in will be compelled to abandon the custom of keeping hogs on their premises. To carry out this rule, Dr. Simmons, the health officer, served notice upon two of the new residents Saturday, that they will not be permitted to keep hogs in the city limits at any time, a practice to which they have long been accustomed and were following when the limits were extended. As a result, they must now immediate sale, or by removal to the country beyond the half-mile limit.
Lexington Leader September, 2 1906

"Extended limits"
The recent extension of the city limits has brought a world of trouble, worry, doubt and confusion to some of the city officials, but so much to the City Assessor and the principals of the several schools, that each of them is demanding block maps showing the annexed territory.
Lexington Leader September, 4 1906

"Suburban districts"
Unless Mayor Combs and the General Council come to the rescue and order a sufficient appropriation for putting up street signs and house numbers in Arlington Heights, Columbia Heights, Forest Hill and Herr Park addition, which are included in the territory recently added to the city by the annexation ordinance, these residence suburbs are likely to lose the free delivery service which Uncle Sam has generously provided for them. By order of the postal department two new carriers were, beginning September 1, added to the free delivery department and assigned to these districts, greatly to the delight to the citizens of these outlying residence sections who for some time have been clamoring for free delivery.
Lexington Leader September, 9 1906

"Mrs. Faulconer's home cut out of the city"
The Joint Ways and Means Committee of the General Council, and Joint Improvement committee, met Wednesday night in the office of the Mayor. One of the matters coming before the Ways and Means Committee was the effect of the annexation ordinance upon Mrs. Nannie G. Faulconer, superintendent of County Schools. Under the law she is required to maintain her residence in the county, and at the time of her nomination, election and qualification, she was a resident of the county. The recent annexation ordinance brought her home within the corporate limits of the city and special provisions were necessary in her case.
Lexington Leader September, 13 1906

"Complex problems"
Some rather serious complications have arisen in regard to the recent annexation of new territory to the City of Lexington, the principal among which are the acquisition of common school property and the necessity of changes being made in the location of certain voting places in the county precincts affected by the change.
Lexington Leader September, 16 1906

"Voting status obscure"
Are the three thousand voters residing in the newly annexed territory to the city of Lexington to be denied the right or privilege of participation in the next city Democratic primary, or, in other words to be disfranchised to that extent? is a question even the county authorities seem unable to answer.
Lexington Leader September, 30 1906

"Express company"
People who live in the recently annexed territory of the city may protest in vain against the refusal of the express companies to deliver their parcels free of charge. As a result of their refusal to deliver parcels free during the Christmas rush, many of the citizens of the newest portions of Lexington entered a vigorous kick with Mayor Combs on the grounds that they were no longer "out of the city," and requested His Honor to ascertain why they did not have as much right to free delivery of express as any one else in town.
Lexington Leader January, 14 1907

"Will resist taxation"
Since the holding of the County Democratic Convention Saturday has developed the fact that residents of the newly annexed territory of the city are in Sixty-first (county of Fayette) instead of the Sixty-second (city of Lexington) legislative district, and as such are not entitled to have a voice in the election of representatives from this city, they will resist the collection of the city taxes this year.
Lexington Leader June, 9 1908

Everything from “You can’t keep your animals”, “We don’t know where you are”, “We can’t deliver to you for free”, “You can’t keep your job and live where you do” and ”You can’t vote”, all the way to “We won’t pay any taxes”. All of these would seem to be quickly solved but the voting one. It wasn’t that they weren’t allow to vote, it was just in which district and for whom. The City could move a municipal boundary, but the State legislature would have to wait for the 1910 Census results to apportion their new State district lines. The residents could vote, but they could not vote for the City candidate , they would have to vote for the county representative even though they lived in the City.

Eventually it all worked out and the City slowly set in place a procedure for annexing newer developed areas into the corporate boundary and by tweaking and trying, the process lasted until merger.

The growing pains out of the way, Clifton Heights settled into a period stability. People moved out and people moved in. Slowly, almost inexorably, the University moved into and started to take over the quiet little area. First the sororities bought the little frame houses facing Rose St, then along Columbia, and with a church sandwiched in, created a “greek” enclave which the guys matched on campus, on the south side of Clifton and the lots facing on Woodland Ave.. Between 1950 and 1956 they had taken roughly 1/5 of the original Clifton Heights plat for college related uses.

The University took over some of the housing that had been built along Pennsylvania Avenue and two other sororities joined in on Columbia Ave. Then the Baptist Student Center came along and the future of Columbia Ave was sealed. Meanwhile the University took the south side, set the Faculty Club on the corner and just kept adding parking. The Mines and Minerals Building connected the Faculty Club to the structured parking and phone center and the roadway of Clifton Ave had to go.

In 1992, the University announced that they were going to build a new library, hired a design firm, then settled on a location. Right in the middle of Clifton Heights. Right in the middle of the two former ponds. The design called for acquiring the rest of the block. Eminent domain and State money meant that there was no hope, although some fought it, but they soon gave up. The building occupied by the University Church of Christ, built in 1952, was swapped for a new building on Columbia and all that was left, was a few frame houses.

Those houses on Pennsylvania Ct and one, lone, two story on Woodland Ave look like they won’t last much longer. The University surrounds these houses and has bought up about half of the blocks between Rose La. and Euclid, so it won’t be long.

So there we have it, 100 years, one century from farmland to redevelopment, one subdivision come and gone, and this is not the only one.

As this series continues, I hope that it evolves into something useful.

Lexington's "Spatial Fix"

I finally got to read the article by Richard Florida that I printed out from the March issue of Atlantic Monthly magazine. His idea is about how the crash will reshape America. I feel that this "crash" is but a minor fender bender in what is really heading our way.

The first parts dealt with the financial markets and a brief history of earlier recessions/depressions and the shifting landscapes that their major centers endured. It is what he says about the rest of the country which concerns me. His comments on the resiliency of New York City are based on the diversity AND density of its population and he cites the argument of Jane Jacobs that jostling of many different professions and different types of people, all in a dense environment, is an essential spur to innovation—to the creation of things that are truly new. So, could that mean that for our innovative, creative young people to be sucessful, we need to increase the density of our downtown population? Just how well will that mesh with our preservation of the historic properties and districts?

He goes on to explain what will happen to the cities that used to be the manufacturing centers, how with the decline of manufacturing in the U.S. or even the relocation to the southern states, our aging "Rust Belt" cities are trying, unsuccessfully, to reinvent themselves. Then there are the "Sun Belt" cities that had little going for them save their cheap land, easy credit and service sector jobs which got caught in the housing bubble and sub-prime loan fiasco. I am not sure Lexington has dodged this bullet completely yet.

His solution for cities, is for a new "spatial fix" for after the crash. His definition of spatial fix is:

The physical character of the economy—the way land is used, the location of homes and businesses, the physical infrastructure that ties everything together—shapes consumption, production, and innovation.

And he states the suburbanization was the fix for the industrial age. Industrialization brought on mass production, which brought on prosperity and mass consumption. Prosperity and Federal policies brought on more home ownership, which when subsidized by the highway construction and Interstates, led to a suburban lifestyle. No more depression era penny pinching, this was the era of expanding credit and an ever increasing need for home ownership. With that need came the newer, riskier financing strategies and an ever expanding supply of housing choices, it was just that these choices were standardized and farther away from the city centers.

Housing and transportation costs now make up a substantial portion of all household budgets. Local governments are obligated to provide services to the farther flung residences without an adequate return in tax revenue (i.e. these places don't pay for themselves) and as people in the areas of highest foreclosure rates have found out, home ownership is not all it is cracked up to be.

Home ownership, lately has also made our populace just a little less mobile than it was. There was a day when, if the job opportunity presented itself, Dad could pack up the family and go. Now they will have to sell the house, worry about Mom finding a job, will the kids fit in to the new schools and will the new house cost more than it does here. Now that opportunity must a substantial one.

There are several things that Lexington can do and Florida has laid them out in his concluding paragraphs.

In part, we need to ensure that key cities and regions continue to circulate people, goods, and ideas quickly and efficiently.

and

Today, we need to begin making smarter use of both our urban spaces and the suburban rings that surround them—packing in more people, more affordably, while at the same time improving their quality of life. That means liberal zoning and building codes within cities to allow more residential development, more mixed-use development in suburbs and cities alike, the in-filling of suburban cores near rail links, new investment in rail, and congestion pricing for travel on our roads. Not everyone wants to live in city centers, and the suburbs are not about to disappear. But we can do a much better job of connecting suburbs to cities and to each other, and allowing regions to grow bigger and denser without losing their velocity.

A denser, more diverse, more mobile Lexington will invite more ideas and allow for more innovation through more interaction with a greater cross-section of our population in closer quarters than we now see. We will also need a greater effort to re-localize our manufacturing and food production because this is just the beginning.

Why Are We Unlike The Rest of The World

LA Times columnist David Lazarus, in yesterdays edition, started off with this broad statement:

It's hard to appreciate how truly pitiful our public transportation system is until you spend some time with a system that works.

And then goes on to gush over how the transportation in Japan is far superior to what we have in the states. I have also heard for people who long for a train system similar to Europe's. Lazarus and others speak somewhat fondly of the ease of use and the simplicity of the linkages found in these systems. So, what is keeping us from creating the same atmosphere on this continent?

For the most part, I think that we all find only one or two things that we like about those cultures, that we would be willing to emulate. Some like the active street scenes with the restaurants and shops on the ground floor and residential above. Some like the narrow streets and hidden nooks and crannies. Others like the grand public spaces and the wide plazas and boulevards. There are those who enjoy hopping on the train and running to another city for the evening(and returning before morning). And those who desire to walk to the local green grocer for the fresh harvested produce from which to prepare the evening meal. These are all pieces to the whole picture. But we American don't want the whole picture, just selected parts of it.

Americans, from the Revolution, have tried to differentiate themselves from the Europeans in almost every way possible. Driving on the right and not the left, English measures and not metric(dosen't that sound odd), horse racing counter-clockwise and not clockwise just to name a few. We have tried to become unlike them, even though before we got here, we were them. We charted our own course and took it on with rugged individualism.

Except that that rugged individual still needed some kind of support network. Very few explorers went off into the wilderness alone, they traveled in groups. Often in groups of twenty or more. The frontier farmers didn't establish their farms alone, the usually did it similar to the way the Amish do it still, as a group effort. The westward push across the Great Plains were in wagon trains and even the great "mountain men" had to have somewhere to get supplies.

Now we look back at Europe or other places that we have come from, sometimes longingly, sometimes not, and wish that we had some small part of what they have. Be it their rail system or their local street scene, some of us just wish that we had it. It reminds me of the local Chamber's trips to similar "successful " cities for "ideas". This buffet of ideas will work only if all the pieces complement each other, otherwise you may just end up with a toxic cocktail.

Lazarus at one point says that we will need to make our cities less comfortable in order to force our population into mass transit. Are these Japanese or European cities so uncomfortable that we will stop visiting in such great numbers? Are they so uncomfortable that their own inhabitants are fleeing in droves? I think not. So, why do we visit there (repeatedly) and long for what they have, yet fail to bring it about in our own country. Even our own "world class" cities cannot pull it off with the same panache as they do. I don' t think that we want their comfort level, because we are Americans and we deserve more.

And maybe we are just deluding ourselves.

Avenue of Champions Question

Earlier today one of my more infrequent visitors did a search on Google which was oddly specific ”when was the few blocks of Euclid avenue that runs through the University of Kentucky named "Avenue of Champions?". I don’t know if they got their answer or not (but I doubt from the sites listed on the response screen that I saw. Mrs. Sweeper and I both thought that this is just up my alley, so here is my take on an answer.

The street segments in question date from the 1880’s and were an extension of Winslow St that was part of the Stephens & Winslow plat which covered the west side of S. Limestone from Maxwell to Winslow and almost to Broadway. The construction firm of Stephens & Winslow built the structure recognized as Henry Clay’s law office and Winslow Street is probably named for Mr. Winslow. In the late 1880’s this street(just a dirt path) led to a subdivision of narrow lots and shotgun shanties known as Adamstown and formed the northern border of the State College property.

One again I turn to the Lexington Library’s History Index for some headlines and quotes. After the turn of the last century, the University folks started asking for help from the city fathers. First of they wanted the dirt path upgraded to a street, as shown below.

"Board of Works "Through Assistant City Engineer J. White Guyn an urgent request from the State University people has been communicated the Board of Public Works to have Winslow street extending from South Limestone cast towards the university ball park improved.
Lexington Leader Oct. 12, 1909

Now, one has to realize that the Aylesford subdivision had been built on the east side of Rose St (formerly called Van Pelt) starting in 1904 and contained a wide paved thoroughfare named Euclid Ave. Also the university ball park referred to was the old Stoll Field, now the location of the Singletary Center for the Arts.

The city took its time to research and reply.

Winslow Street not property of city and not legal to repair same.
Lexington Herald Dec. 28, 1911

Even so, two years later the street improvements were still being talked about. And still being held up by a select few, as we see below.

"Winslow Street to be improved""The only reason that Winslow Street, which borders the State University, is not now a wide, well-improved street, is because of the request made by the members of the State University faculty to postpone action," said Mayor Cassidy on Wednesday morning. "The construction of an improved street from Limestone to Rose Street is necessary in order to give proper facilities to traffic in that part of the city and would have been done in the first year of my term if I had had my way," continued Mayor Cassidy.
Lexington Leader Dec. 10, 1913

The Adamstown area was one of a handful of small “colored communities” inside the city’s one mile radius city limits as detailed in this Leader piece.

"Eight Little Towns in Lexington "Reporters commentary on eight "towns" in the corporate city limits of Lexington. He describes the boundaries of Pralltown, Irishtown, Yellmantown, Brucetown, Smithtown, Taylortown, Goodloetown and Adamstown. In some cases the derivation of the name of the "town" is given.
Lexington Leader Feb. 1, 1914

And apparently this sparked some interest in the area by local investors and developers, as we see here.

"Aims at colored part of Winslow and Adamstown "The most interesting development in the real estate world this week is the announcement by Patrick Devereux that he has practically competed plans for the complete elimination of Adamstown and Winslow Street as a colored section, and is now perfecting plans for the transformation of the entire section bounded by College View Avenue, Limestone street, the State University campus and Rose Street, with modern public improvements and restrictions.
Lexington Leader Aug. 2, 1914

And after about 6 years of talking (and I am sure the proper advance notification)work began .

Grading on Winslow Street from South Limestone to Rose Street and laying of asphalt begins.
Lexington Herald Feb. 5 1915

Then, almost 2YEARS later.

Winslow Street opened to traffic; just completed and covered with asphalt from Limestone to Rose Street, 1800 feet.
Lexington Herald Nov. 4, 1916

Then there came a break for World War I and the “Roaring Twenties” hit the university area. Fraternities were in

"$25,000 capital "Articles of incorporation of the Harold A. Pulliam Sigma Nu Memorial Association which will soon erect a fraternity house on Winslow street opposite the University of Kentucky campus.
Lexington Leader Mar. 1, 1920

Sigma Chi files application to erect fraternity house for $30,000 on Winslow Street.
Lexington Herald May 6, 1920

The University started buying property for the dormitories and other commercial developers brought Harrison St and Lexington Ave on to Winslow near the fraternity houses which then brought the street closer in function to the road to the east, than to the narrower one to the west. Thus the city again stepped in and did the following.

Names of streets changed Drake from Main to High to Grant Street, Alfred Street to Hilton Avenue, Winslow East of Limestone to be Euclid Avenue.
Lexington Herald Nov. 21, 1925

On the south side of the street, the University built a gymnasium for their basketball team and hired a young coach named Adolph Rupp, and we all know what that started. A little later they built a new football stadium and eventually hired a coach, one Paul “Bear” Bryant, and he developed a pretty good football team. So much so, that by the late ‘40s they were talking about a new basketball facility across from the football field, bought the property, and built Memorial Coliseum. The basketball Wildcats had won 3 NCAA Championships in four years and the football Wildcats were on their way to 2 out of 3 bowl games in as many years.

The University then gathered as much hubris as they could muster and asked the city council to rename the section that ran between the two sports facilities, which they did in early April 1951.

"'Avenue of Champions' Likely New Name For Block of Euclid "The section of Euclid Avenue, between Limestone and Rose Streets, soon may be known as the "Avenue of Champions." The Board of City Commissioners will vote Thursday morning on an ordinance proposing the name change in honor of University of Kentucky football and basketball teams.
Lexington Leader Apr. 4, 1951

Paul “Bear” Bryant left in 1953 and it took another 8 years to win another NCAA basketball championship. Both men’s basketball and football have left the area now but some of us still remember the glory years and the street that celebrates them.