Last Week's Photo

Did anybody realize that I missed the weekly photo contest last week?  Good , neither did I.

On that note, I only got one comment on the photo of the completion of New Circle Rd.  The bridge construction in the lower left corner is the last bridge to be built on this 19.6 mile ring of Lexington.

On the right hand side you can see the initial construction of the Todds Trace Apartments which are currently undergoing a complete remodeling. The will soon reopen as the 300's on the Circle. Just above that is the newly built Woodhill Dr and beyond is its twin, Palumbo Dr. The Wood shopping center is not yet underway. One can barely make out the railroad overpass in the distance.

Of course, that means that the water body is the site of the current Home Depot and the remodeled Lexington Mall, now Southland Church. Is it any wonder that the parking lot kept sinking around the mall.

In the top center of the photo is the Idle Hour Park with all of its ball fields and no hint of the auto dealers on New Circle. Behind that and fading off into the distance is the Idle Hour subdivision.

So how many of them did you get?
 
 







This week I have two photos, taken from both side of an area. What I am looking for this time is: What prominent historical feature lies between these two photos?

Good luck.

Growing Indoor Children In The Summertime

Here we are in the middle of summer - and I mean right in the middle of summer - and the kids are going back to school. Some of them got out a few weeks before summer began but all will be going back well before it ends. Even the “unofficial” end of summer, Labor Day, is three weeks from the real end of the season.

Summertime, as a kid, for me was a whirlwind stream of activities either in the park across the street or biking to other parks for events and, eventually, explorations out into the then suburbs. I often tell people that I grew up not on a street or in a certain house, but I grew up in the park, specifically Woodland Park.

I crossed Woodland Park twice every day while attending elementary school and most days four times, since they allowed us to go home for lunch. I can probably count on both hands the number of times that I ate Maxwell cafeteria food.

But summertime was a time for spending all of our available hours doing something with the other kids in the park, be they friends from school or not. After a morning playing games and waiting for the activities directors to show up, we would run home for lunch, then run back for the afternoon's events. Dad had to round us up for dinner and again after the lights went out at the ball field to usher us home to bed.

I don't see that these days and I can pretty well guarantee that you don't either. The days of “free range” kids is well over. On the streets full of single family houses which make up a large percentage of our city, one rarely sees anything but indications of children “living” there. Walk by on a warm summer morning and the birds will be making more noise than the kids – quite different from when I grew up.

When many households consist of 1-2 working adults and youngsters requiring day care, there will be little in any daytime activity. Simply put, our suburbs are pretty much empty during the day.

Daycare, now there is a strange bird. Daycare now has to sell themselves as “pre-schools” with many parents, since they are supplying the early instructions that family members used to demonstrate for free. Daycare now has secluded, fenced play areas, rarely exceeding a few thousand square feet when 20 acres seemed small to me. Outdoor activities at daycare may average less than 3 hours a day, depending on weather.

Is it any surprise that compared to the 1970s, children now spend 50 percent less time in unstructured outdoor activities? And the '70s were not the '50s of my youth. The average early teen, 10 to 16 now spends only 12.6 minutes per day in vigorous physical activity. If it were not for the soccer moms and the little league parents or the pee-wee football and basketball camps, that would be much less.

All of the blame cannot be placed at the doorstep of day care. Although 40 % of the kids in a British study (I don't think that they are that different from American kids) stated they would like to play outside more often, it was the parents who simply didn't allow it. Fear of traffic and a fear of abductions by strangers were the top two reasons given.

Can traffic be so bad as to fear the random careening auto sailing through your front yard? Is not one of the common complaints about our suburbs that cul-de-sacs and limited connecting streets are so prominent? Would it not be one of your neighbors who was driving so erratically? As for the abductions, statically those are done by non-strangers though it does happen it is rare.

Frankly, all of us kids roaming the neighborhood and playing in the park back in my day were being watched by many eyes, without our knowledge. With so many stay-at-home moms and the older couples moving throughout the area, there was little that we could do that did not get home before we did. Empty houses and neighbors who are little more than nodding acquaintances cannot do the same quality job.

When did it become necessary to be so absolutely certain of our child's safety that we limit their opportunities to practice the decision making skills that we should be teaching them? Could it be that we are NOT teaching those skills? Could it be that we are not confident in our teaching abilities?

I have heard it said that parents will structure their child's time so as to incorporate themselves into the child's life. The child needs transportation and support. Television programing and commercials add to the myth by showing the child playing one on one with the parent and not with neighborhood kids. What happened to the TV shows of old like “Dennis the Menace” and “Leave it to Beaver” or the cartoons of “Peanuts” and “Fat Albert”? Teaching, supportive adults / parents and the kids played outside.

A Brief History Of Kroger In The Ashland Park Area

Kroger has had a long and successful journey when it comes to their store locations in and around the Chevy Chase Shopping Center and surrounding neighborhoods.

It was January of 1925 when the grocery concern entered the Lexington market by leasing two locations. One was at Seventh and Maple while the other was Lime and Rose. By the end of 1930 they had opened a store at 112 N Hanover.

Don't go looking for the building now since it was removed some 20 years ago. It sat behind the Delta gas station and could be seen from Main St, .yet it was just 50 foot square and amid many single family homes.

Many of the leases that Kroger signed in those days were for a length of 5 years and the moves were often. By 1935, Kroger had taken over the former S. A, Glass store at 726 E Main and again situated themselves adjacent to the residential established there. 

See photo here

http://kdl.kyvl.org/catalog/xt7z348gg90h_9_605

The long blank side walls faced either the gas station to the left or (eventually) the parking lot to the right, but the display windows looked right out on Main.

January of 1941 brought news that Kroger would open their 4^th Lexington “super” market near the intersection of Euclid and High St. Again a 5 year lease was involved on a building that required the demolition of three residences. By mid April, the store opened to serve residents from Ashland Park, Chevy Chase and as far south as the Monclair subdivision. It is also about this time that walking to the store became near impossible for most folks. 

See photos here

http://kdl.kyvl.org/catalog/xt7z348gg90h_8_703

http://kdl.kyvl.org/catalog/xt7z348gg90h_2_123

In February of 1950, Kroger announced the consolidation of their E. Main and Euclid Ave stores into “one of two of the finest Kroger stores in the country” when they opened the new East High St location. It was right around the corner from the Euclid store and about twice the size. One of the best things to come out of this move was that it allowed Jean's Bakery to become established in the old Main St spot. Jean's, we now know and love as Magee's.

Once again the display windows faced the street and the long side walls stretched back along the parking lot some 165 feet. Residents walking from the Hollywood or Columbia Heights area would have to brave the “heat island” effect of summer or the “windswept tundra” effect of winter as the negotiated the active parking lot.

The mid '50s introduced new competition in Chevy Chase when the Colonial Albers store opened on Euclid Ave across from Clay Ave. Many of us will recognize this as the current location of he Kroger store, but most will not recall that two or three residences still stood at the corner with Lafayette Ave (now Marquis). Exxon would put a short lived gas station on that corner to compete with the Pilot station from Ashland Oil on the corner with Clay.

Edwin and Frank Lyle sold their market at 555 S. Upper St to the Kroger Co in May of 1959. With little remodeling, Kroger stayed there until the early '70s when they replaced the former Albers building with a new store. This was about the same time as the restrictions on Sunday sales were removed. This store has been expanded from its original size in order to keep up with customer preferences. The E High St location was re-purposed in 1978 into the current configuration.

See photo here

http://kdl.kyvl.org/catalog/xt7tdz03077b_4_4

Throughout all of the re-locations, consolidations and expansions the face of the store has always been toward the street and there have always been relatively long blank walls backing to the adjacent property or a parking lot. The positioning of the front door toward a vast, barren parking lot is a recent phenomena which has its beginnings in areas lacking the advantages of walkable retail or other societal accoutrements found in the first ring subdivisions.

Whereas the older style stores built their reputations serving the residents of the immediate area, it now appears that they are attempting to maintain that reputation to a much farther flung population base. Granted, a highly mobile base but also one that now seems to look for ways to limit their unnecessary automobile use whenever possible.

Designing a new facility to address a trend which may be reversing course could be a bit shortsighted. These are not the days of the 5 year leases where Kroger began in Lexington. Kroger now owns much of the property where they build their free standing, specialty buildings and the locational agility that they once had may be lost to the past.

I do not agree with the zone change which Kroger is pursuing nor do I agree with some of the tactics being employed by the opponents in fighting it. I certainly feel that not enough innovative thought has gone into the design for adequately and correctly blending into this vitally important area.

Weekly Photo Winner

 OK, so both Steve Austin and J Sparks could tell me where these three houses are and Mr Sparks gave the addresses as being on Woodspoint Rd in Ashland Park.  Steve even points out the vast difference that vegetation makes in seeing things.  Below is a view as it looks earlier this week.

But remember that this was a two-part question and although there was a good guess, Mr Sparks ( I believe) was a little too far out Tates Creek Rd and on the wrong side.  I have always understood that the Kelly Dairy farm was just south of the Mt Tabor Rd intersection with Tates Creek.  That would put it whee the Lansdowne-Merrick subdivision is now.

Below is an aerial photo taken shortly after the Immanuel Baptist Church 

finished their initial phase of building

You can see the church in the lower right corner and the old Mt Tabor along the bottom edge.  Gainesway subdivision is in the upper left and the Lansdowne Shoppes (upper right) are yet to be started.  I would place the date of this photo at about 1963 or 64 at the latest.

This week's contest may be a little tricky.  I am looking for 4 identifiable places or locations.  Good luck.

The Lengths That Some Will Go To...

I am again surprised that some residents of Lexington will go to great effort to complain about what they see as a waste of the taxpayers money - their money.  

Often times it will be those who live is the higher income areas who rail the loudest about this injustice and usually the funds are being expended on works which will benefit a less well of majority.  I mean, how often do we hear about the half full buses (carrying those people) running all over town?  Or the supplemental lunches for at risk children?  I certainly don't hear the low income parent or autoless employee raising a stink.

What caught my attention this time was the recent addition of a low, decorative retaining wall and planter bed immediately adjacent to the curb of Tates Creek Road just before you get to Albany.  I think that it was the "For Sale" signs, with their bright colors, that made me look, but it was the location of the wall that made me come up short.  They are placed right in the path of the soon to be started Tates Creek Sidewalk project.

The Urban County Council has been discussing this project for over 2 years now.  Federal funds have been secured.  A design has been approved.  A contract has been let.  And now someone has spent money to place an additional obstacle for the contractors.  Unbelievable.

This is not  a simple case of not knowing where the property line is or what they may do within the Highway Right of Way.  This is purely a spite installation.  It may appear to be landscaping but the grade change indicates where they should and shouldn't have done any work.

The present owner clearly wishes to prevent anyone from walking in front of his property, be they neighbors or attendees of any of the churches in the area.  Best of all there is a posted bus stop at the far end of the frontage, as seen below.

It is actions like this which reinforce the un-walkable nature of the suburbs.  This block face is certainly not that much different in length than the section of Ashland Ave between High and Main.  The uses in the area are transitioning away from strictly residential.

Change does come hard to many folks, be it the gentrifying of a downtown neighborhood or the evolution of a high volume roadway like Tates Creek Rd., but fighting the change is generally a costly, losing battle.  I would rather the City not be made to incur the sizable majority of that cost.

Two Part Contest

I did have a story ready for this week but then realized that some of the family involved were still looking in on things here and may not appreciate it.  

Yes the view is on Maxwell St and many of the structures are still around.  Congratulations to all who guessed or knew it.

 For this weeks contest I am going to take a bit of a different track.

The date is 1932 and this is a staged photo for Kelly Dairy.  The processing plant was most obviously at 511 W Maxwell. (Ten or so blocks from our last entry).

 The question this week is two-fold.  Where was the farm on which the cows were milked and identify the location of this supposed delivery.  One of these houses has recently completed a major improvement.

The British Can Admit It - Will We?

Major food price rises are all but inevitable. Philip Clarke, the chief executive of Britain's biggest supermarket chain Tesco, has admitted as much to the British press. Tesco, was heavily implicated in the recent horse-meat scandal, has said that rising global demand means the historic low prices to which British consumers have become used are now unsustainable. This is tantamount to the CEO of WalMart or Kroger admitting that they can no longer commit to keeping prices low for all Americans.

Any one who has been shopping lately can attest to the fact that the “invisible grocery shrink ray” is at work in our local markets. The packages may be rising slowly in price but the quantity in the package is smaller over all. The organics and locally grown stuff is characterized as for the elite and other who want to be upper class.

Is Kentucky (or America) that far behind this time? A recent poll, commissioned by the Prince's Countryside Fund to mark National Countryside Week, reveals that a majority of British consumers would be prepared to pay more for food if they knew the extra was going to farmers rather than to supermarket shareholders. With the recent introduction of the “Udderly Kentucky” milk program by the Secretary of Agriculture, James Comer, is he seeing the same sentiment from Kentucky shoppers?

The “Buy Local First” movement seems to be making headway and local farmers markets are establishing themselves in more locations every year. Still, the primary comments are that they are out of the reach of many residents. Sadly, such costs are reflective of the unsubsidized production costs for local entrepreneurs.

The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization forecast last month that global food prices could rise by as much as 40% over the next decade. Much of this as a result of a growing middle class in countries such as China and India. With the prospects of America's middle class waning and poverty moving to our once booming suburbs, this global rise will hit Americans very hard.

Usually, supermarket bosses (British and American) have proved extremely resistant to admitting economic pressures would affect the cost of groceries. WalMart has recently committed to its sourcing more locally produced fruits and vegetables without discussing whether price differences will be kept to a minimum. One way the WalMart has kept their prices low is to require the producer (or middleman) to do more preparatory work so that their “associates” don't have to.

What comes to mind next is WalMart's (and possibly the federal governments) definition of locally produced. Generally, the range of 500 miles is sufficient for most programs and for Lexington that means as far away as Central Michigan or the Gulf Coast. Local could them mean about 2/3^rds of the Eastern U.S. National brands and the monoculture farming of agri-business can still dominate our food choices at that rate.

I can see that a growing number of Kentuckians (and Americans) are awakening to the reality that many of our corporations are (and have been) leading us astray with phrases like “supermarket to the world” while importing more and more under “trade” treaties. With all of our corporate farming debacles, many countries will not accept our exports for reasons like GMO's or processing concerns.

America's food system has become unsustainable and there is more than enough blame to cast in all directions. The big question is, can it be turned around in time to prevent it from crashing like a house of cards?

Larger stores and bigger selections may have helped get us to where we are but simply reversing those trends will not be a solution. Our seasonal treats of yesteryear have become the culinary mainstays of the declining middle class. Farmers who took great pride in their goods on the farm now see disease and pestilence introduced in the processing and packaging plants. Corporate marketing gurus have persuaded us that only the perfect looking fruit or vegetable is worthy of purchase. These trends also need to be altered.

The way it is major food price rises are all but inevitable, which leaves us with only one good option – to change the way it is.

Photo Winner For July 10

There was at least one sharp eyed reader this week who then gave away the answer to the Facebook crowd. Congratulations to J W Thompson and the others who agreed. 

Yes, the location is from South Broadway looking north and the building on the right is the Reynolds building built in 1917.

The best that I can tell, this was right in front of Beckham Place, which was the passageway beside and access to the Southern Railway station. It therefore makes sense that Southeastern Express would have a presence (advertisement or physical) along this road, although I believe that this is a rooming house.

The intersections off to the left are in order Magazine, Hayman and Chair which are probably fairly familiar to many readers as the neighborhood of Country Boys Brewing. The intersection behind and to the right would, of course, be Scott St (nee Scott Ave) since having its name changed from Bowyer St. This was done when the connection was made to Scott from Limestone/Upper area.

Roszell's Feed and Grain elevator did not last much past this photo and was replaced with produce stands and chicken coops by the end of the decade. The building which houses the Tolly-Ho is some years away from being built.

The street railway tracks served two functions as the streetcar tracks went to the Red Mile/Fairgrounds and the interurban cars turned down Angliana Ave on their way to Versailles or the baseball park.

Below is the way that it looked last week

Are We Planning For Real Change

Apparently seeing one of Google’s experimental, driverless cars driving or parking itself on a San Francisco street, is not all that unusual. So, can you imagine just how the widespread use of driverless autos might affect the city of Lexington? Would you be much different than the residents here in the late 1890s had they been told that horses could soon be a rare sight in city streets? How will you react when you first encounter an example of one?

With so many people working and thinking about this technology will our planners soon have to begin incorporating provisions for it? Most of our city's plans have been prepared as looking about 20 years into the future, yet history (our history) shows that our future is moving well faster than we have ever planned for. My favorite example is the plans to expand our former streetcar system in 1930 and within the decade the whole system was gone. Life moves a bit faster these days.

A common scenario for driverless cars is one where you don’t drive in circles looking for a parking spot because your car drops you off and then parks itself to await your call. From a current local viewpoint this is desirable since it is your car and you want it available when you need it. From the view of one from a more populous area, a taxi or car service can work better, hence the rise of Zipcar and Uber. 

For many in this country, an automobile is a mobile storage devise for their belongings and which takes them places.

Next, let us imagine that we will eschew the use of “personal” autos for the ease of use of driverless car services. The then common dream is that surface parking lots will become park or recreation areas. I find wildly unlikely unless it is a city owned lot and most are not. Parks are a revenue drain and not a revenue generator, therefore the bane of private investors. 

What do you expect to see happen to this property then? Can you squeeze a modern usage building on some of these oddly shaped lots without taking a few “historic” structures?

Shifting our attention to the streets themselves, many say that we will need far fewer traffic signals when both autos and the streets are equipped with sensors and can coordinate between each other. What does that do to the walkability of an area? Can we cross the street safely with out traffic signals if the driverless cars are zipping by nose to tail with each other?

On the one hand, streets can then be narrower if there is no need for on street parking, but narrower streets are a problem to some of our massive delivery vehicles. Until they develop a self unloading delivery vehicle I doubt that we will see a driverless one. Parking lane may disappear but the loading zone will be with us a while longer.

In our suburbs we can begin to eliminate the large expanses of parking at the shopping malls and big-box stores if the trips are made in neighborhood “pool car” which will drop you off and come to get you. (Kind of sounds like a circulatory bus without a driver doesn't it?) To what use will all of that land be put then?

May we also see the loss of the attached multi-car garages with their mostly blank panels or, worse yet, a gaping maw of an opening. Among many Millennials the auto as a status symbol is a foreign concept and it is becoming harder to sell them on it.

Speaking of selling things, how will they sell driverless car and to whom. 

It's no secret that car commercials are, by and large, fiction. Shiny cars roaring along empty city streets devoid of traffic jams. Not a traffic jam (or signal) in sight, just the joy of the open road for the driver. How can you get an exhilarating feeling if you are not driving? Will car commercials disappear like the cigarette one did but for different reasons?

How soon do you think that some kind of drastic change can come about? Above are just a few of the early changes that we could see should we adopt the driverless auto as quickly as we did the “horseless carriage”. Perhaps you have thought of something I left out. Drop me a line and tell me you thoughts.

Weekly Photo July 4 Answer

Being a holiday weekend, I did not expect too many guesses and I gave a fairly simple photo.  I was not disappointed since nobody gave more than a half-hearted attempt.

This location, of course is the intersection of Kentucky Ave and Central in the Woodland subdivision.  The store at left was then known as the J.E. Botkin Meats and Grocery, though when I was growing up I knew it as Everett Jennings Real Estate office.  It has since been re-clad in brick and essentially re-built from the outside in.

The subdivision was originally platted in 1884 and at one time hosted the streetcar line as part of the loop with Woodland Ave one block over.  The older photo, taken in 1935, clearly shows that the line has been removed, probably due to the Woodland Auditorium being superseded by better venues.

As you can see very little has changed in terms of buildings and traffic.

Today's offering is not so easy.