[Birds Chirping] How does a city begin?

Lexington, Kentucky, began as a conversation.

Early June, 1775, around a softly bubbling springs, a group of men sit on buffalo hides and logs around a fire.

[Fire Crackling] They're talking about the settlement they're determined to build in this beautiful wild land.

What should they call it?

Lancaster?

York?

Then they remember the news they had just received.

It had taken six weeks for them to hear about a battle far away in Massachusetts, the beginning of the fight for a new nation, for their dream of a free country.

[Gun Fired] [Men Shouting] Lexington, Kentucky, is one of some 25 cities in the United States named for the battle at Lexington that started the American Revolution.

What sets this Lexington apart is that the name was chosen before the outcome of the war was known.

What optimists they were, these hardy explorers.

They had no doubt that they and their countrymen would succeed in their ambitious march to freedom.

And that this, their little camp, was a great beginning too, of a city that would grow and prosper to become a place where, years, generations, and centuries later, there would be many stories to tell.

[music playing] Welcome to Lexington, 250 years.

Funding for this program is made possible in part by the KET Endowment for Kentucky Productions.

[music playing] William McConnell and his companions, the men who sat around the fire that evening in 1775, were among many pioneers who came to the region in the 1770s.

You have a landscape that is flush with deer, with bison, with the animals that, you know,long-range hunters like Daniel Boone come back and report on all that is that Kentucky is flush with.

[Music Playing] Virginia claimed this western territory in 1772.

The royal governor, Lord Dunmore, named it Fincastle County to honor his oldest son.

By the mid-1770s, small pioneer stations were being established along with larger settlements such as Fort Boonesborough and Fort Harrod.

McConnell and his group came from Pennsylvania, traveling in a pirogue, a large canoe made from a hollowed-out tree.

They came down the Ohio River, heading to the Elkhorn Creek in central Kentucky.

[music playing] William McConnell had visited what is now known as Kentucky, and he came back with his brother and some other friends and relatives because they wanted to basically come out and take advantage of the opportunities that were becoming available.

They were here, they were excited about the potential of expanding not only their own holdings, but for that of the country that was growing at the time.

[River Flowing] The springs were very important to any settlers heading west because water means life, means civilization, and opportunity.

When McConnell and his party first saw this land, it must have been absolutely awesome.

Just seeing the abundant wildlife, the plant life, and then having the natural springs, it was an oasis even then.

[Birds Chirping] It was a gently rolling, beautiful area that had good water, good soil, and it was a place.

I think they recognized pretty fast, good for a settlement.

[Birds Chirping] European settlers were hardly the first people to view the area's prime real estate.

Going back 10,000 years, you're looking at people who are hunters and gatherers, people who are very much reliant upon the natural resources of the area and their knowledge of the natural resources.

A place like the Bluegrass region is abundant with a variety of sources of food and water that they can utilize.

Over 2,500 years ago, during the woodland period, the Adena people lived in central and eastern Kentucky.

They were a highly organized, skilled culture that built settlements along the waterways, leaving behind mounds and other earthworks.

We often think of Adena as when we think of the mound building and things that they did, where you see the development of cultural growth and sophistication.

When you think of the Adena and the waterways, we think of people living in an area where they're not only going to have access to natural resources, but they're also going to have access to transportation to other people.

Of the three branches that combine to form Elkhorn Creek, it is the middle branch, Town Branch Creek, and one of its open water springs that were destined to play a major part in the history of Lexington.

McConnell Springs is an opening in a cave system.

[River Flowing] Rain that falls on much of Lexington gets funneled into the subsurface that goes into that cave system and comes out at McConnell Springs.

By 1776, when Virginia carved Kentucky County out of Fincastle County, few, if any, indigenous people lived in Kentucky.

But the arrival of settlers still brought conflict.

Native Americans, in relation to Kentucky, in relation to the bluegrass region, leave Kentucky as a region in which they're no longer establishing villages.

They, you know, Cherokees from the southeast, Shawnees from kind of the Ohio River and north live on the edges of what becomes Kentucky.

Not because they're abandoning the region, but they're kind of giving themselves a buffer between each other in many ways.

In the 1770s, all of a sudden, Shawnees and Cherokees, you know, they see structures, they see forts, and there's, you know, a question of how do they respond?

And Euro-Americans coming in see Shawnees and Cherokees as obstacles, as in the way of their path to a kind of a land paradise in the region.

It took four years for Lexington to become more than a name.

In 1779, Robert Patterson and 25 men arrived from Fort Harrod to establish a garrison north of the Kentucky River.

They built a log blockhouse along the town branch, about where Main and Mill Streets meet today.

Despite a first winter of bitter cold, frozen ground, and scarce food, by the end of 1780, there was a line of cabins within the stockade.

The settlers elected town trustees and drew up a plan for streets and lots surrounding the fort.

That same year, the Virginia legislature divided Kentucky County into three counties, officially establishing the town of Lexington as seat of Fayette County, named for the Marquis de Lafayette of France, who was helping the colonists win the Revolutionary War.

After the war ended, Robert Patterson and the others used the logs from Fort Lexington to build cabins for their families.

[music playing] And as the story goes, though, Lexington still had perils.

In 1783, not long after a schoolhouse opened on the town square, teacher John McKinney had to wrestle a wildcat, a real wildcat that found its way into the classroom.

Fighting the cat with his bare hands, McKinney somehow prevailed, although he did dismiss class early that day.

Around this time, it became clear that the growing frontier town needed a newspaper.

And on August 11, 1787, John Bradford published the Kentucky Gazette, the first newspaper west of the Allegheny Mountains.

As more newcomers arrived, neighborhoods expanded around the central settlement.

[music playing] Up the hill, High Street is named High Street because it is up the hill to your house, to be in the South Hill.

It did have some log house in it in the earliest day.

One of the early homes on High Street was a two-story log house with a frame addition and masonry chimney, built in 1784 as home to Presbyterian minister Adam Rankin.

Rankin's presence itself was evidence that an important component of community life had arrived, organized religion.

Rankin's church was the first in town.

Other denominations organized as well.

An Episcopal society formed.

Father Stephen T. Baden, the first priest to be ordained in the United States, came to Lexington to lead a small Catholic congregation.

Lexington's first African Baptist church was one of the earliest Black congregations in the country.

[music playing] Another early congregation was located about five miles outside Lexington along the South Elkhorn, founded as part of the Traveling Church.

The Traveling Church was kind of one of the early establishments of religion in Central Kentucky.

In 1781, two brothers, Lewis and Joseph Craig, brought about 500 or 600 of their followers to Central Kentucky, and that church really grew into about 10 or 12 churches all over Central Kentucky.

A few years later, their brother, Elijah Craig, who was also a Baptist minister, came and set up a church in Georgetown.

And Elijah Craig is the most remembered of these brothers because he was also an industrialist, and he also distilled bourbon whiskey and became famous for that.

[music playing] In Lexington's early days, the Pepper family distilled whiskey in a log cabin along Town Branch Creek.

Meanwhile, another tradition that would forever alter the identity of Lexington was taking shape as horse races were held along main streets.

People realized pretty fast that the horses raced here had strong teeth and bones.

And this is because the limestone has in it concentrated elements like calcium and phosphate.

People felt the need to showcase what it is that they had in their horses, so much so that they took this risk of taking, you know, you know, some of the few primary public roads and a settlement at the time, and would have these quarter-mile sprints.

[music playing] Lexington was, of course, for many years, the largest city in Kentucky, and it was the center of Kentucky culture.

It was the place people looked to when they thought of Kentucky and leaders, not just politically, but socially.

From its beginning, the Kentucky Gazette newspaper was a staunch supporter of a new movement for independence, this time from Virginia.

Kentucky was admitted to the Union on June 1st, 1792.

There was only one town in the new state with enough meeting space to host a legislative session.

Kentucky's first governor, Isaac Shelby, took his oath of office on June 4th in Lexington's recently completed market house.

As the 1800s arrived, Lexington was a bustling frontier community.

Lexington's population had grown to about 2,000 people by 1790, and obviously, it was sort of a western outpost.

There weren't a lot of people there, but yet people with great determination wanting to create a wonderful city with amenities that they had enjoyed in Virginia and the Carolinas and other places.

So, there was a great drive to build this great place for themselves and their future.

John Bradford started a firefighting company, the first one west of the Allegheny Mountains.

Land speculation led to increased demand for credit, and a group of Lexingtonians started the Kentucky Insurance Company, the first banking institution in Kentucky and the first of many banks to be established in Lexington in the 1800s.

[music playing] There was even an aspiring inventor in town.

[music playing] While Robert Fulton is later given credit for the first successful commercial steamboat, in 1793, a curious crowd gathered along Lexington's town branch as local watchmaker Edward West demonstrated his model steamboat.

[music playing] Even without steamboats, getting in and out of Lexington at the time was relatively convenient.

Revolutionary War veteran John Craig received a franchise to operate the Valley View Ferry across the Kentucky River.

The town's location along traditional pioneer travel routes in all directions added to its status as a crossroads for both a growing state and an expanding nation.

If we think about the expansion of the United States from the East Coast west, Lexington is one of your first stops if you're coming out of North Carolina, coming out of Pennsylvania, coming out of Virginia, as you move across the nation.

And so, you meet in the city that is going to supply a respite for you because it's a hard walk and supply you for the rest of your journey.

We have all these roads, Parker's Mill Road, Clay's Mill Road, you know, tons of roads that ended up at mills at the waterways out in the county.

They milled the things for the people who lived here, but they also milled for the people passing through.

Perhaps the most important development that brought national attention to Lexington was that it became a college town.

Transylvania Seminary near Danville was lured to Lexington in 1793 by the donation of land near the center of town.

The space that's now Gratz Park was simply one of many so-called outlots that were surveyed in 1780 and sold off to different owners as Lexington was beginning to establish itself.

And in 1792, a group of local citizens bought the lot, and they deeded it to what was then Transylvania Seminary, soon became Transylvania University.

In 1799, Transylvania established a medical school and a law department.

University leaders wanted to create an institution that could compete with the schools on the East Coast and draw those searching for a higher education.

We would routinely send professors to Europe, which at the time was where the best scientific instruments were made, and they would buy thousands of dollars of equipment and have it shipped back to teach the people here in Lexington, Kentucky.

It was a huge investment, and people in this far western region were able to see things that many people, even in the East, had never seen in their lives.

There were only five medical schools in the United States at the time, and for one to be located in this small frontier town was quite impressive.

We were definitely the western edge of European expansion through the continent, and at the time, many people believed that diseases were regional, and the diseases you might get in Philadelphia were different than the diseases you might get in New Orleans, for example.

And so, we actively advertised that people in the region should send their sons to Transylvania so that Western men could teach them about Western diseases.

Lexington had much to offer both prospective citizens and visitors.

All it needed was a snappy promotional slogan.

Josiah Espy of Pennsylvania traveled west in 1805 and was so impressed by Lexington that he penned a poetic ode to the city.

[music playing] But Lexington will ever be the loveliest and the best.

A paradise thou art to me, sweet Athens of the west.

Boosters of the city started to really sell it for folks to move to Lexington from the East Coast, from other parts of Virginia and North Carolina, and Pennsylvania, that Lexington is the new place to be.

Athens of the West wasn't total hype, though.

By 1805, Lexington residents enjoyed student and amateur music and theater performances.

There was a library where, for a subscription fee, residents could check out the latest books.

At a time when only a few places in the nation were producing pianos, Lexington cabinetmaker Joseph Green advertised his as being especially designed to withstand the changeable climate of the United States.

[music playing] In 1806, the city unveiled its third courthouse.

In just 24 years, legal proceedings had moved from a log building to a two-story stone building, to an elaborate three-story brick building with a clock tower topped by a spire and a weather vane.

[music playing] Just as the Athens of Ancient Greece had its great politician and cultural leader, Pericles, the Athens of the American West had its own foremost citizen and political force.

Henry Clay came to Lexington in 1797 at the age of 20, fresh out of law school in Virginia.

The lanky young man with a captivating voice and persuasive courtroom style soon established himself as one of Lexington's most successful attorneys and one of the city's most influential and beloved citizens.

In 1799, he married Lucretia Hart, daughter of Thomas Hart, a wealthy hemp manufacturer.

Clay began his political career with the election to the Kentucky legislature in 1803.

By 1812, he and Lucretia and their growing family also had a large brick home on 400 acres about a mile east of town named Ashland.

We have a very concentrated downtown in the 19th century.

We still today can see those pieces.

And so folks like Henry Clay would have townhouses, and then they would have large plantation-like places outside of town.

Today, Richmond Road, right, you're like three minutes from downtown.

It's not far at all.

But in the 19th century, when Ashland is built and when Henry Clay makes his name, that is a rural country home.

Clay was the first Kentuckian to become a major politician on the national level.

His election to the US House of Representatives in 1810 was the beginning of a career in politics that lasted for the rest of his life.

He became one of the most famous people in the country, one of the most powerful people in our government, one of its leading lights, one of the guiding lights for the nation.

He was responsible in many ways for its growth and success leading up to the Civil War.

And as a result, Ashland became a place of pilgrimage.

People came here because they wanted to visit Clay.

They wanted to see his farm.

In Clay's own words, he had a passion for rural occupations.

He was doing things that no one else was.

He was very interested in the idea of scientific agriculture and experimentation.

He brought new hemp breaks.

He brought Arabian horses here because he was curious about how mixing more Arabian blood into thoroughbred lines would change those horses.

Would they be better?

They weren't.

But that was okay.

That was a result.

Another Lexingtonian worked with one of the leading architects of the time to create his suburban estate on Grosvenor Avenue.

John Pope, Kentucky's US Senator from 1807 to 1813, met an architect in Washington, D.C.

who was designing the nation's Capitol building.

This house that we are sitting in now was designed in 1811 by architect Benjamin Henry Latrobe, who is considered to be America's first architect, designed it for Senator John Pope and his wife, Eliza.

And this building originally was on 11 acres overlooking the town branch.

So it would have been quite a kind of commodious suburban estate.

[music playing] Other prominent families were moving to the neighborhood near Transylvania University.

In 1814, John Wesley Hunt completed the elegant federal-style house, Hopemont, which stayed in his family for generations.

[music playing] Hunt came to Lexington in 1795 as a merchant.

His real fortune was made when he expanded to hemp and rope building, and later to banking, insurance, and stock investments.

He is thought to have been the first millionaire west of the Alleghenies by the time of his death in 1849.

That's about $41 million today.

The growing town attracted many new professionals and business people in the early 1800s.

Among them was Benjamin Gratz, the son of a prominent Philadelphia family and one of the first Jewish lawyers in the United States.

Gratz arrived in Lexington in 1819 to practice law, but like Hunt, soon got into the lucrative hemp business and became one of Lexington's most influential citizens.

Benjamin Gratz buys the house we now know as the Gratz House in 1824.

And he is one of the wealthiest people in town here.

He has the distinction of being the first known Jewish resident of Lexington, Kentucky, and for about 30 years, apparently the only Jewish resident of the city.

And his influence eventually is going to result in the preservation of the space as an open space and eventually as a park.

Lexington was flourishing, but it didn't remain the area's largest city for long.

With the emergence of steamboats on the Ohio River, populations shifted to Louisville and Cincinnati.

Nonetheless, Lexingtonians continued to build their wealth in hemp and other industries and expanded the city's reputation as a center of education, arts, and culture.

[music playing] On November 12, 1817, the ladies and gentlemen of Lexington gathered at Sanford Keynes Tavern on Main Street to hear a concert that opened with a movement from Beethoven's First Symphony.

It was the third performance of the symphony in the United States.

[music playing] Lexington's fine houses were filled with beautiful furniture made from Kentucky's plentiful walnut and cherry wood.

Elegant candlesticks and teapots made by Asa Blanchard and other local silversmiths graced the dining tables.

In a time before photography, a painted portrait was the way to show one's status and to preserve a countenance.

Matthew Jouett, who had studied law at Transylvania University, ignored his father's advice and opened a portrait studio, becoming Kentucky's most prominent portrait painter of the era.

In 1818, Horace Holley, a Unitarian minister from Boston, was recruited as Transylvania University's president, building the reputation of both the university and Lexington.

Holley transformed Transylvani into an institution that had hundreds and hundreds of students that Transylvania in that era trained many of the Western America's top lawyers and top physicians in the 19th century and really made a lasting impact on Lexington and its economy, and kind of the history of education in Kentucky.

Transylvania University continued to be the choice for the schooling of young men, but Lexington's prominent families wanted their daughters to be well-educated, too.

Parisian native Charlotte Mantel founded one of the city's private schools for young women with a curriculum that included geography, literature, and French.

One of Mantel's students was Mary Todd, granddaughter of settler Levi Todd and daughter of Robert Todd, a prominent banker and town trustee.

The Todds lived in a large house on West Main Street that had previously been an inn.

Young Mary was a dedicated student and showed interest in politics.

Mary grew up in a household where Henry Clay was well-known, was a friend.

She grew up as an admirer.

She herself stated that she was a fiery little wig.

Despite the prominence of Transylvania University's medical school, Lexington had no public hospital.

Its first one, which opened in 1822, specialized in mental health.

The Fayette Lunatic Hospital, later renamed Eastern State, was the nation's second psychiatric facility.

Lexington continued to be a place that the curious and cultured wanted to see for themselves.

In 1819, the city excitedly welcomed President James Monroe and War of 1812 hero Andrew Jackson.

Fifty years after Lexington's founding, the city hosted its most prestigious visitor to date.

In 1825, the Marquis de Lafayette of France stopped in Lexington as part of a tour celebrating the 50th anniversary of the beginning of the Revolutionary War.

He was referred to as the nation's visitor, and the entire town, the whole region, if you will, was a part of this.

People were thrilled to have this Revolutionary War hero, who had meant so much to this country, come to Lexington.

Lexington was still widely known as the Athens of the West when citizens made a significant step toward a future nickname, Horse Capital.

Not just of the West, mind you, but of the world.

In 1826, area horsemen established Lexington as a center for thoroughbred horses with the formation of the Kentucky Racing Association and the construction of a racetrack on the east edge of town.

By the fall of 1828, they hosted their first meet, and they set up shop on about 30 acres of land.

That track was considered to be a premier racing plant, only the second track in North America to have a mile-long course on the dirt.

Like much of Lexington's early labor force, the grooms, trainers, and jockeys at the track were enslaved Blacks.

What we have in Lexington is this model racing facility.

And what we have surrounding Lexington are thoroughbred breeding farms that the closer we creep to the Civil War era, the more and more they're putting themselves on the map as being able to breed racehorses.

If you were a local farm holder in the decades leading to the Civil War and you were breeding thoroughbreds, that the labor on your farm would have been on the backs of enslaved boys and men.

Slavery had existed in Kentucky from the earliest days of settlement, as had opposition to the system of human bondage.

Efforts to outlaw slavery during the writing of the state's Constitution failed.

With Lexington's location at the heart of the state's largest slaveholding region, the city became Kentucky's center for the slave trade.

By the 1820s, Cheapside, located next to the courthouse, was well known regionally and beyond as a slave market.

Lexington was one of the largest markets for the enslaved in the Upper South.

So Courthouse Square is a place where enslaved individuals were sold constantly from the 1820s through 1865.

By 1831, Lexington's growth led to its formal incorporation as a city, which meant moving from management by trustees to the election of a city council and mayor, with John Wesley Hunt's son, Charlton Hunt, elected as the first mayor.

The new city also began to organize a municipal fire department and added to its police, then called watchmen, the beginnings of a formal police department.

Transylvania University chose a Lexington-born architect named Gideon Shryock to design a grand new administration building.

Shryock had wowed Kentuckians with his design for the Capitol building in Frankfurt and was a talented advocate of the majestic and column style known as Greek Revival.

In early June of 1833, however, an unexpected and unwelcomed sickness arrived in town, disrupting construction and almost everything else as well.

The 1833 cholera epidemic certainly changed the face of Lexington for a period of time.

Cholera was the sort of thing that would instill sheer terror in the minds of people.

The town branch had become a dumping ground for human waste and frequently flooded nearby wells, the perfect breeding ground for a bacterial disease that spreads mainly through contaminated drinking water.

Doctors had little understanding of cholera, and the death toll rose quickly.

Lexington did have a well-established casket maker by this time.

In 1827, Joseph Milward had started what would become one of Lexington's longest-operating businesses of any type, Milward Funeral Directors Company.

But in the intensity of the epidemic, there was no keeping up with the task of burying the dead until an unexpected hero stepped up.

William King Solomon was the town ne'er-do-well who supported his well-known drinking habit by digging cisterns and wells.

Seeing bodies wrapped in shrouds and blankets stacked on top of each other around town, he picked up his shovel.

Day after day, he carried and carted the bodies of cholera victims to Lexington's Third Street Cemetery and dug their graves.

Some theorized that Solomon's preference for libations other than water prevented him from being infected.

Whether that was the reason or not, he survived the epidemic.

More than 500 men, women, and children in the town of 6,000 did not.

There was a huge percentage of the population that was gone, and that included everyone from the landed gentry to the laborer, to children, to enslaved persons.

The disease had no bounds, and so it displaced a lot of people.

By August 1833, the outbreak was subsiding.

Because many slave owners had died without wills, the settler states, increasing numbers of enslaved men, women, and children found themselves on the auction block at Cheapside.

Demand for enslaved labor was increasing on southern plantations and in one important local industry, the growing and processing of hemp.

This fibrous plant was used to make numerous products, from ropes and shipwreckings to baling twine and clothing.

Hemp for making rope was the big crop in Lexington in the first decades of the 19th century.

And after you harvested the hemp, you had to stretch the fibers and twist them to make rope.

So, enslaved laborers were employed to just walk back and forth, pulling on those fibers, twisting them together.

Hemp was grown at Henry Clay's Ashland.

It was also the base crop for large estates outside the city.

One such plantation was built on the southern outskirts of Lexington in 1848 by Joseph Bryan, whose father had traveled through the Cumberland Gap with Daniel Boone.

Acres of hemp were grown around this estate's home, and neighbors passing by, seeing the fields of this tall crop waving in the breeze, gave the farm its name, Waveland.

As community life recovered after the cholera epidemic, Transylvania's new administration building, Morrison Hall, was completed.

Lexington's role as a regional banking center grew with the establishment of the Northern Bank of Kentucky in 1835.

It became Lexington's largest bank of the 19th century, with branches in Paris, Richmond, Louisville, Covington, Barbourville, and Glasgow, as well as its Lexington location at Market and Short Streets.

Largely in response to the needs of children orphaned during the epidemic, Mayor Hunt led an effort to open the city's first public school.

The Morton School No.1 on Short Street was built with a $12,000 request by a wealthy merchant, William Lord Morton.

The first Catholic school in the city, St.

Catherine's Academy, was founded in 1834 by the Sisters of Charity of Nazareth.

[music playing] Transportation was evolving as well.

Well, in the 1830s, the first railroad was authorized in Kentucky, and the logical place to begin building a railroad would be Lexington.

It was still Kentucky's largest city.

The first train route, dubbed the Daniel Boone, took passengers between Lexington and Frankfurt, a mere two-and-a-half-hour trip.

New inventions were changing everyday life.

The daguerreotype process of photography that had developed in France came to town with the opening of downtown studios.

For as little as $1, Lexingtonians could have their images captured for posterity.

But things were far from picture perfect in the Athens of the West.

In Lexington, as across the nation, tension over the issue of slavery was growing.

One of Kentucky's most ardent anti-slavery voices was Cassius Marcellus Clay.

This distant cousin of Henry Clay tried to start an anti-slavery newspaper in Lexington.

The true American appeared in June 1845, advocating for constitutional emancipation.

However, just a month later, while Cassius Clay was bedridden with typhoid fever, a crowd stormed his building on North Mill Street, dismantling his press and shipping it to Ohio.

Though Lexingtonians were divided on slavery, there was community consensus on another issue of the time.

Between cholera and continuing growth, the city needed a new cemetery.

But this was Lexington, and of course, they wanted it to be beautiful.

The new Lexington Cemetery that opened in 1849 reflected the popular British garden style, with tombstones and memorials arranged not in rows but along curving walkways gathered under flowering trees and shrubs.

The gatehouse and stone buildings at the entrance were designed by a rising architect and builder, John McMurtry.

He did a lot of different styles.

He's the one that really brought the whole Gothic architecture to Kentucky.

Building one house is enough, but he was building 40 and 50 houses here and these huge churches and buildings.

In the 1840s, McMurtry built two churches on Market Street, the new Second Presbyterian Church, as well as Christ Church Episcopal's new sanctuary.

The latter was at the same site where the congregation had gathered since 1796.

He was a very prolific builder in the sound and just beautiful homes.

He did special homes.

One home was the Ellie Villa on Linden Walk.

Another was the Thomas January House on West 2nd Street.

[music playing] McMurtry built Francis Key Hunt's home north of the city.

Hunt named his castle-like manor Loudon.

Another notable house was Botherham, built in 1851 on 40 acres off of High Street.

Anyone that comes in here, they see it, and they just can't believe this place.

It's just a one-of-a-kind.

The power of John McMurtry, of what he did back then, that still blows you away.

That's talent.

He had talent.

Downtown commercial buildings also reflected the city's penchant for attractive architecture and for entertainment.

In the mid-1850s, the International Organization of Odd Fellows, a fraternal organization, built a meeting place and opera house at Main and Broadway.

The second-floor auditorium of Odd Fellows Hall was used for dances, concerts, and theatrical performances.

The Melodeon building on Main Street included a drugstore on the first floor.

The entertainment hall on the second floor featured performances by General Tom Thumb, the 26-inch giant, promoted by P.T.

Barnum, Jenny Lind, the Swedish songbird, and popular actor John Wilkes Booth.

The Melodeon has been at a primary corner and block of Lexington's history ever since it evolved into a theater building that was modernized in the 1850s to get this cast iron front, which continues, of course, to be there today.

Education in Lexington made significant expansions in the late 1840s and 1850s.

In 1849, Morton School, also known as City School No.1, got a new building, and City School No.2 was built on Main Street.

That school carried a name that remains in Lexington education today, Harrison, named for James Harrison, head of the school committee.

In 1851, City School No.

3 opened, named for Dr.

Benjamin Dudley, a professor of medicine at Transylvania University.

The tradition of private schools continued to grow.

In 1854, David A. Sayre, a prominent banker and silversmith, founded a girls' boarding school that later became Sayre School.

In the early 1850s, artist Ferdinand von Lehr climbed onto the tall roof of Transylvania's Morrison Hall to sketch a bird's-eye view of the city.

He captured a graceful panorama of lovely residences, towering church spires, trees, and couples strolling along wide streets, a tranquil scene that was soon disrupted by somber news.

On June 29, 1852, Lexington statesman Henry Clay died in Washington, D.C., of tuberculosis.

Clay had spent the final years of his life working in the United States Senate to pass compromises that might resolve disputes over slavery and avert a civil war.

When the news of Clay's death arrived in Lexington, church bells rang and stores closed.

The nation also mourned.

Clay was the first person honored to lie in state in the nation's capital rotunda.

Twelve days after his death and after a 1,200-mile procession through the East, Clay's body arrived at Ashland.

His Lexington processions the next day wound through the city.

Mourners from across the state and the nation, some estimates put the crowd size at 100,000, followed the horse-drawn carriage carrying Clay's casket to the Lexington Cemetery.

He could have been buried in the Congressional Cemetery in Washington.

There were those who suggested that he should do that.

He easily could have been buried at Ashland.

He chose to be buried in Lexington Cemetery, which was relatively new.

It was about five years old, I believe, when he died.

And he made that choice because he wanted to be buried in a place in his hometown, surrounded by the people he cared about most, his constituents, people who showed such love and admiration for him.

Almost immediately, Lexingtonians began to plan a fitting memorial.

Atop a 120-foot limestone Corinthian column, a statue of Lexington's beloved booster, farmer, and statesman overlooked the city, a city that was no longer the West, nor was it exactly the South or the North.

[Drum Playing] Kentucky was not among the southern states that left the Union during the Civil War.

But Kentuckians, with strong connections to Lexington, were in leading in leading roles.

Mary Todd had left Lexington to visit a sister in Springfield, Illinois, in 1839, where she met and married a young attorney.

Abraham Lincoln was now in the White House, and Lexington's Mary Todd was first lady.

Like many families, her relatives in Lexington were divided over the war, with some fighting for the South.

A former Transylvania student, Jefferson Davis, was president of the Confederacy.

Before the Civil War, Lexingtonian John Cabell Breckinridge seemed poised to become heir to Henry Clay as Kentucky's leading national political force.

He was vice president under James Buchanan, and in 1860, he ran for president, and it was Breckinridge, not Stephen Douglas, who came in second to Lincoln in the national vote.

Breckinridge supported states' rights, so when war broke out, he joined the Confederate Army, later becoming the Confederate Secretary of War.

In October 1862, some 1,800 Confederate troops under the command of General John Hunt Morgan, a grandson of early Lexington businessman John Hunt, were retreating from the battle at Perryville, Kentucky, when they encountered about 300 Union troops that were camped on the Ashland Estate in Lexington.

Other than this unplanned skirmish, Lexington did not see major battlefield encounters during the Civil War, but residents nonetheless found war literally at their doorsteps.

When you talk about the Civil War in Lexington, you're talking about the lived experiences of four and a half years of Americans trying to figure out what's happening.

Transylvania University, much of downtown, becomes hospitals and areas for recovery for soldiers who are injured at the Battle of Perryville, just in Boyle County, just down the road.

Old Morrison Hall at Transylvania University housed casualties, all the while looking over a smaller version of the war taking place in Gratz Park below it.

Families in the beautiful homes found themselves taking opposite sides of the conflict, as both armies used the park as a bivouac.

During the Civil War, it was a convenient open area.

Troops from both armies, when they occupied the city, stabled cavalry there.

They cut down the trees for firewood.

They harassed the residents for food and for fodder for their horses.

Lexington is a really wealthy agrarian town.

It is a divided place.

Gratz Park is a great example of this.

You have Hopemont, the ancestral home of the Hunt Morgans, who are unabashedly aligned with the Confederacy.

Right across Gratz Park is the Bodley-Bullock House, which is the home of the Union Army during the war.

So they're quite literally staring at each other.

Frances Dallam Peter, the daughter of a Transylvania University professor, kept a diary as she watched soldiers march outside her window.

Frances Peter writes about how Confederate soldiers forced their way into Benjamin Gratz's house, how they took hay for their horses, and how they instructed his daughter to make sure that dinner was ready for them, and that Gratz, who himself was a strong Union man, wound up having to entertain them for supper.

By 1865, it was clear that the war was drawing to a close, and Kentuckians began turning their attention to other matters.

In February, the state legislature used a new federal law that provided land for colleges to establish the Agricultural and Mechanical College of Kentucky.

This would eventually become an extremely important development for Lexington, as the Agricultural and Mechanical College eventually became the University of Kentucky.

In April 1865, when Robert E. Lee surrendered to Ulysses S. Grant, bells rang throughout Lexington, and residents set off fireworks.

Just five days later, they took in the news of John Wilkes Booth's assassination of Abraham Lincoln.

The city proclaimed April 19th a day of mourning and prayer.

Some citizens closed their businesses to attend services.

Others kept their businesses open.

The challenging dynamics of post-war life were already setting in.

In some ways, Lexington became two cities in the decades after the Civil War.

After the Civil War, freed slaves are moving.

They're moving in great numbers to places like Lexington.

The Black population here is going to triple within a decade, and so this influx into Lexington means that living patterns are going to change.

And Lexington, which has always had a degree of residential integration before the Civil War, now is going to become much more segregated in its living patterns.

Some Black residents form dozens of rural communities such as Bracktown, Maddoxtown, Caden, and Little Georgetown.

Segregated neighborhoods in the city included Kincade Town and Goodloe Town in the east end and Prawl Town in the south part of the city.

Davistown, southwest of downtown, was, from its earliest development, home to a number of European immigrants and rural Kentuckians in addition to African-Americans.

Other Black Lexingtonians lived virtually hidden behind the houses of their employers.

These Black pockets, as we can call them, you know, were located primarily in areas that allowed African-Americans to walk to work.

You know, so you find Black people as doing domestic work.

Some of them are working as cooks and chefs, and common laborers.

Typically, these locations, these pockets, were basically hidden, you know, from the main thoroughfares of Lexington.

It also allowed, you know, Whites to have easy access to their servants, but at the same time allowing them to keep control on what African-Americans were doing.

You know, they were visible.

You know, they could keep watch.

Many African-Americans choose to move to places like Lexington after the war because they think a city is going to offer them more protection.

The violence that's permeating Kentucky is also happening here in Lexington as well.

And so, if we look at the years immediately following the Civil War, we can see horrific violence going on, often because African-Americans maybe are being too economically successful.

In 1866 and 1867, Lexington hosted conventions to discuss full civil rights for Blacks.

The Colored Agriculture and Mechanical Association held its first fair and entertainment exposition in 1869.

[music playing] Women raised funds to open the Howard School, the first free school for the city's Black children.

Other early schools for Black children were founded by the city's Black church congregations.

The Black church has been that constant pillar in the African-American community that enabled them to come together, trying to, you know, to make sure that in spite of what they were experiencing or the Black community was experiencing, to hold on to their faith.

Churches in general were expanding and moving.

Consecrated in 1868, St.

Paul Catholic Church on Short Street stood high with the city's tallest bell tower at 210 feet.

[Birds Chirping] In 1872, the city's oldest congregation, the First Presbyterian Church, dating to 1784, moved to the corner of Mill Street and Market Street.

[music playing] The community around the Kentucky Racing Association track was also expanding, and its horsemen were among the most successful Black residents in the post-Civil War decades.

What we see is within 10 years post-war, the population surrounding that track more than doubled.

It was predominantly African-American and predominantly Black horsemen and their families.

[music playing] Thoroughbred racing, one of America's most beloved pastimes since the early 1800s, became even more popular after the introduction of the Belmont and Preakness Stakes and the Kentucky Derby in the 1870s.

Lexington's African-American jockeys dominated the sport.

Oliver Lewis won the first Kentucky Derby and the Belmont Stakes in 1875.

Isaac Murphy won three Kentucky Derbies in addition to more than 1,400 other races over the course of his career.

By 1887, Murphy was America's highest-paid athlete, earning $12,000 annually.

The good money that he and other African-American jockeys earned during this period made them the object of anger and sometimes violence by White jockeys.

Eventually, Black jockeys were pushed from the sport.

While thoroughbred racing continued to be the dominant sport in the Bluegrass and across the nation, harness racing gained popularity in the 1800s.

In 1875, the Kentucky Trotting Horse Breeders Association founded a racetrack off-Broadway next to the Lexington Fairgrounds.

The Red Mile, a name taken from its mile-long track of red clay, was the second harness racing track in the country.

As the nation celebrated its 100th anniversary in 1875, Lexington dedicated a Centennial Park, although the name never caught on, as Lexingtonians referred to this green space as Gratz Park in honor of Benjamin Gratz and his descendants.

After the Civil War, when the open park had just been completely abandoned and had been used as stable grounds by both Union and Confederate cavalry units, Gratz's son, Howard, who comes in and says to Transylvania University, I will, at my own expense, fix this up as a park.

So he would open it for about three months every summer, and there would be concerts and other activities.

[music playing] Lexington finally got a medical hospital in 1877 when the Sisters of the Order at Charity at Nazareth opened the St.

Joseph's Hospital at Ellie Villa on Linden Walk.

It soon moved to a larger location on 2nd Street.

[music playing] Amid Lexington's progress, there was a potentially disastrous complication.

Imagine what Lexington would be like if the University of Kentucky had moved to Louisville or Covington, or Bowling Green.

Well, it almost happened.

The Agricultural and Mechanical College, the land-grant school created in 1865 that eventually became the University of Kentucky, initially operated in Lexington.

In 1878, however, after a legal dispute over its location, the State General Assembly decided to put the school's future and permanent location up for statewide bid.

Cities across the state made hefty offers, so Lexington had to go all out to keep it, offering land for a new location near present-day Euclid Avenue and $50,000 in city and county bonds for buildings.

UK, the University of Kentucky, is Kentucky's land-grant institution.

Its entire job from 1865 until 2025 is educating Kentuckians through research.

It makes it this much broader educational system.

What you're really seeing with UK being built is an investment in the educational infrastructure, and that plays a huge role in terms of the economic potential that a region has, because you now have an infrastructure there that allows the people who are living there to build on the skills that they already have.

You know, as they become educated, their human capital improves, they're able to command higher wages, be more productive, and that really fosters economic growth.

Eager to build on its potential, Lexington established a Chamber of Commerce in 1881.

As the decade progressed, there was a lot to tout.

The city had 10 newspapers, three of them published daily.

Electricity was replacing gas lights on the city streets and illuminating homes and businesses as well.

Another new invention, telephone service, had arrived.

And the city made a major improvement to its official fire department with the addition of steam-powered fire engines and firefighters on 24-hour duty.

In 1880, James Pepper, whose family had distilled whiskey after the Revolutionary War near Town Branch Creek, built a new distillery, one he claimed was the largest in the world.

In 1882, the Agricultural and Mechanical College dedicated its grand new administration building.

That same year, the talented architect John McMurtry created a unique octagonal building called Floral Hall on the fairgrounds near the trotting track.

In 1883, the Lexington Courthouse that had been built in 1806, was replaced with an elaborate new one.

The three-story stone structure featured a 100-foot cupola and displayed a world-famous sculpture in its rotunda.

Having seen many statues going up honoring men in the community, 200 local women formed an organization determined to give Lexington's public art scene a touch of femininity.

They raised $5,000 to purchase the marble sculpture Woman Triumphant from Tiffany & Company.

The statue was the work of Kentucky-born sculptor Joel T. Hart.

Some in Lexington thought the depiction of a nude Venus towering over a chubby and equally nude cherub was scandalous.

That might be considered just a bit ironic.

After all, less than a mile from the courthouse on McGowan Street, business was booming at one of the nation's best-known houses of ill repute.

Its proprietor, Belle Brezing, was perhaps the most famous bordello madam in American history.

Woman Triumphant and Belle Brezing both had critics and fans, but there was no disagreement about the beautiful new opera house on Broadway.

Lexingtonians filled its seats to watch performances of everything from minstrel shows to Shakespeare.

[music playing] They enjoyed getting around town on the electric streetcars, although it wasn't always a smooth ride.

[music playing] The city had replaced its flood- and disease-prone water system with modern reservoirs and waterworks.

But no amount of water could make a difference on the morning of Friday, May 14, 1897, when a fire broke out in Lexington's new courthouse.

As the city's daily Argonaut newspaper reported, despite firefighters' valiant efforts, in less than 40 minutes the whole magnificent structure that had cost the county a $125,000 was a mass of ruins.

So was Woman Triumphant, smashed when the roof collapsed.

Construction of a new courthouse began immediately.

Its decorative stonework showcased the talent of Henry A. Tandy.

Tandy, born enslaved, established one of Lexington's most successful contracting and stonework companies after the Civil War.

Henry Tandy was like many African Americans who came from rural Kentucky after the Civil War to create a new life in an urban area.

And then, he and another African American, Albert Byrd, went into business for themselves as masonry contractors and were really prized for their excellent work.

They built some of Lexington's most iconic buildings, from the old courthouse, Miller Hall on the University of Kentucky campus.

Tandy was a very successful businessman, and he became really the wealthiest African American in Lexington in the early 1900s.

The new courthouse stood at the heart of a community brimming with growth and progress.

Railroad tracks changed the look of downtown as they ran down the middle of streets like Broadway and Vine.

Limestone expanded to the north, with dates on buildings marking their start in Lexington history.

When Lexington started to grow its main street, I won't say we had high rises, but you were starting to have business buildings, commercial buildings going up that were by known architects, and it made for a very handsome downtown.

Lexington's population grew from around 29,000 in 1880 to 42,000 by 1900.

The turn of the century saw Lexington expanding in many ways.

Lexington had been home to a small number of Jewish families since its earliest day, and in 1903, the first Reform Jewish congregation, Adath Israel, was established.

The congregation initially met in Odd Fellows Hall, soon moving to a building on Maryland Avenue and eventually building a temple on North Ashland Avenue.

Orthodox Jewish families also were meeting in Lexington, and in 1912, the Ohavay Zion Congregation incorporated.

The synagogue on Maxwell Street served the congregation for more than 70 years.

Public health was expanding.

Lexington now had a second medical hospital.

A Protestant infirmary established in the late 1890s was renamed Good Samaritan Hospital in 1899.

Public education was improving.

Under the leadership of Massillon Cassidy, who became superintendent of both city and county schools in 1885, both facilities and teacher training expanded, gaining Lexington a national reputation for educational excellence.

The first consolidated elementary school, Picadome, opened, as did the city's first kindergarten at Dudley School.

The original Morton School on Walnut Street became the city's first high school, and in 1909, its building was replaced with the first Lexington school designed specifically as a high school.

Schools were segregated, but both Cassidy and Lexington's Black leaders worked together to improve education for Lexington's Black students, setting Lexington apart from many Southern communities.

Lexington's growing population also meant new subdivisions.

West of downtown, Woodward Heights was built on the land surrounding the historic house, Botherum.

In 1886, Colonel Woodward bought the farm, took this down to one acre, and then he sold off all of these parcels where they built these beautiful Victorian and Edwardian houses.

[Birds Chirping] On East Main Street, Bell Court formed around the pre-Civil War Bell House.

The Woodland neighborhood added a popular park amid its single-family homes.

Mule-drawn streetcars delivered visitors from downtown to enjoy the tree-lined walkways, concerts, and other gatherings.

Woodland eventually became Lexington's first city-owned park.

Opportunities for women expanded in Lexington in the late 1800s.

By 1889, both the Agricultural and Mechanical College and Transylvania University were admitting women students to degree programs.

One of the Agricultural and Mechanical College's graduates, Mary Desha, co-founded the Daughters of the American Revolution in 1890.

Women were also making their mark on numerous social reform issues, nationally and locally.

Sophonisba Breckinridge, a descendant of a prominent Lexington family, was the first woman to be admitted to the Kentucky Bar.

She later moved to Chicago and became a leading social scientist and activist.

In 1892, teacher Mary Ellen Britton led the work to establish the Colored Orphan Industrial Home.

The battle for women's right to vote was growing, and two Lexington women were at its forefront.

Laura Clay, daughter of Cassius Clay, co-founded the Kentucky Equal Rights Association in 1888.

The organization promoted suffrage and other legal and educational rights for women.

Another leader was Madeline McDowell Breckinridge.

This great-granddaughter of Henry Clay worked for reforms in education, child labor, and health, as well as women's suffrage.

In 1894, Lexington, Covington, Newport, women were added to the voting rolls in school elections.

So, we have different categories; municipal suffrage, presidential suffrage.

There are different gradations of voting rights for women.

As women worked for voting rights and other social reforms, many other changes, from agriculture to transportation, shaped Central Kentucky as the 1900s arrived.

Hemp remains a huge driver, but hemp is unbelievably labor-intensive.

And so, the turn towards tobacco occurs as we hit the 20th century in Lexington.

Central Kentucky's big tobacco crop made it a natural location to be a center for tobacco sales.

A loose-leaf auction process, in which the crop was made available in warehouses for buyers to inspect at length, had been used in Virginia for years.

Virginia transplant Charles W. Bohmer brought the idea to Lexington in 1904, leading the organization of the Burley Loose Tobacco Warehouse Company and attracting buyers from the major tobacco companies.

Numerous warehouses were soon added, many along South Broadway, and Lexington grew to become the world's largest Burley tobacco sales center.

[music playing] That post-Civil War image of Kentucky is so deeply tied to things like the Derby and horse farms, and racing, and Lexington is the center of that.

The nation's thoroughbred racing and harness racing champions were being bred, foaled, raised, and retired at farms around Lexington, such as Woodburn Stud, Idle Hour, Runnymede, Domino Stud, Elmendorf, Hamburg Place, and Walnut Hall Farm.

On city streets, though, Lexington horses had new competition that was going to be hard to outrun.

The first car on Lexington streets was actually built in the city.

Bicycle shop owner Thomas Dewhurst's two-seater, the Dewabout, looked a bit like a buggy with a motor, but was not to be underestimated.

This thing could cruise at the frightening speed of 15 miles an hour.

The Dewabout was one of a kind, but increasingly other autos showed up on Lexington roads.

In 1903, automobile races were part of the Fourth of July festivities at the fairgrounds.

In 1904, the inevitable happened.

The first traffic ticket was issued.

The automobile age was here to stay.

As Lexington sped into the future, America's reading public was immersed in novels and short stories inspired by the city's past.

James Lane Allen, who was born here in 1849, went to Transylvania, taught at Transylvania, and ended up becoming one of the most popular American novelists of the late 19th, early 20th century.

Many of his stories were based on Lexington history.

But Allen also wrote some controversial books, and one in particular involved a character who believed in evolution, which was a very controversial topic then.

And Allen was criticized for that, and he didn't take that well.

And so, he vowed never to come back to Lexington, and I don't think he did.

Reading in general became easier in Lexington when the subscription library was replaced with the free public library.

The new library building, adjoining Gratz Park, was paid for by a grant from the Carnegie Foundation and opened in 1905.

Another impressive and widely used building opened two years later on East Main Street.

Union Station served railroads running passenger trains in and out of Lexington.

The station extended over two-thirds the length of a football field down Main Street.

A stained glass front adorned the 50-foot dome overlooking a large arrival circle.

It is something that really provides a sense of place and all sorts of people going off to World War I, returning from war, going to World War II, returning from war.

You could take daily trains to Washington, all sorts of places, and get there on an overnight sleeper and be in Washington the next morning.

[music playing] Buildings in Lexington were getting taller as well.

In 1914, Lexingtonians were invited to ride the elevator to the top of the city's first skyscraper and enjoy the view from 15 stories up.

The building was home to the First National Bank and, at the time, was the tallest building in the state.

And Mentelle Park, named for schoolmistress Charlotte Mentelle, took shape.

Much of the Henry Clay estate became large, distinctive neighborhoods.

The neighborhoods of Ashland Park, Ashland, and Chevy Chase all are carved out of Henry Clay's estate.

They hired the Olmsted Brothers to come in and lay out Ashland Park in the Ashland neighborhood.

So, they created a park-like atmosphere.

They created the little triangles and the medians.

Their goal was that no person lived more than about a hundred yards in green space and that no person be able to see more than a block or so down the road in a straight line.

Lexingtonians were getting a broader view of the world through the growing medium of movies.

The Ben Ali Theater, built by Elmendorf farm owner James Ben Ali Haggin, switched from live theater to films.

The Strand Theater promised patrons a $10,000 pipe organ and the finest pictures of the day.

Movie theaters introduced a new way to learn about current events, newsreels.

Lexingtonians were not only reading about the growing conflict in Europe, they were seeing scenes of battlefield action.

While America's involvement in World War I was several years away, the growing prospect of war intersected with another battle at home, the continuing fight for women's voting rights.

Kentucky is really active in the women's suffrage movement nationally.

It was the gateway to the South.

When national leaders were trying to grow interest in suffrage, they come to Kentucky.

And within Kentucky, Lexington is really the epicenter of a lot of the activity that is going on because Kentucky women were some of the very first in the country to vote.

In 1914, suffrage leaders Laura Clay and Madeline Breckinridge spoke before the Kentucky legislature, the first women to ever do so.

Women in eight states had already won the right to vote.

In May of 1916, more than a thousand women and men marched along Main Street in Lexington, rallying for women's voting rights, the largest suffrage parade ever held in Kentucky.

In 1916, the Kentucky General Assembly passed a bill that significantly impacted Lexington.

The Agricultural and Mechanical College of Kentucky officially became the University of Kentucky.

Lexingtonians were proud of the growth of the land-grant school.

Great affection for the school's sports activities was also growing.

In 1916, the university dedicated the new Stoll football field.

Football was UK's first dominant sport, and the team already had a nickname, the Wildcats, inspired by an observer's description of how hard they fought on the field.

People began following athletic activities associated with the University of Kentucky many, many years before basketball became a popular sport.

The University of Kentucky has, for much of its existence, had a major following in its athletic activities.

The fighting abilities of the school's young men on another field soon took precedence.

In 1917, the University of Kentucky established its Reserve Officers' Training Corps, just a month before the United States entered World War I. As the war progressed, Union Station was crowded with departing regiments and their families.

A local doctor led a remarkable effort to treat the war's wounded.

Lexington surgeon David Barrow recruited volunteers to provide medical services in England.

The Barrow Medical Unit helped to treat many soldiers wounded in the bloody battles on the Western Front.

Another important wartime contribution was made by Lexingtonian Solomon Van Meter.

He invented a backpack-style parachute with a ripcord release, an innovation that made jumping from airplanes safer?

News of the World War I armistice on November 11, 1918, prompted a joyous parade on Main Street.

The celebratory mood continued in 1919 when the Barrow Unit, which had stayed in Europe to treat the wounded, finally dispersed at Cheapside to great cheers from a welcoming crowd.

The 1920s in Lexington began with emotions running high.

On January 6, 1920, happy suffrage supporters packed the gallery of the state capitol to watch Kentucky legislators vote to ratify the 19th Amendment of the US Constitution, granting women the right to vote in all elections.

A little over a week later, some Lexingtonians celebrated and others commiserated as the 18th Amendment, which outlawed the sale of alcohol, went into effect.

The Lexington chapter of the Women's Christian Temperance Union held a day-long celebration.

That evening, one of the city's favorite watering holes, the bar at the Phoenix Hotel, stayed open until midnight for one last call.

Even without legal bars, business was booming downtown.

A new hotel, the LaFayette, opened in December 1920, advertised as Lexington's $2 million hotel, where lunch cost just 75 cents.

The LaFayette joined the Main Street, brimming with retailers such as Skuller's Jewelry Store.

Skuller's had moved from its original location on Limestone Street to the Odd Fellows Hall building, bringing with it Lexington's most famous timekeeper, a 14-foot dual-faced cast iron and steel clock that stood on the sidewalk in front of the store.

There were many clothiers on Main Street, including Graves-Cox, Kaufman Clothing Company, Lowenthal's, Meyers, and Embry & Company, as well as large department stores, including Wolf, Wile & Company, and J.D.

Purcell.

Barney Miller's auto parts store was branching out into an exciting new technology, radio.

Lexington did not have a radio station at the time, but stations were going on the air in Louisville and other cities across America, and Miller believed radio would be a coming phenomenon.

In 1922, the Kentucky Theater opened to great fanfare.

Lexington's new Main Street movie palace boasted oil paintings in the lobby, a grand Wurlitzer symphony organ, and an advanced heating and cooling system that owners promised would keep the “air as fresh as a hill breeze.” On Paris Pike, Joyland Amusement Park began its 40-year fun run in 1923 with a midway, the city's first swimming pool, and by the end of the decade, the popular Wildcat roller coaster.

While Lexingtonians flocked to Joyland, tourists were coming to Central Kentucky in droves to see one of the state's most popular attractions.

“Tourists first asked where they can find him and then where they can find Mammoth Cave,” Elizabeth Daingerfield, manager of Faraway Farm, told a New York Times reporter in 1923.

He was Man o' War, the thoroughbred champion that won America's heart in post-World War I America, now retired from racing.

Man o' War never ran in the Triple Crown.

In fact, though born in Fayette County, he never raced in the state of Kentucky.

He set scorching time records and, in one race, crossed the finish line a hundred lengths ahead of the nearest competitor.

Racing fans came from around the world to see America's greatest racehorse for themselves and to meet his personable groom, Will Harbut.

By the late 1920s, there were roughly 14,000 automobiles in Fayette County, but an even faster form of travel was catching on.

Privately owned planes, flying circuses, and exhibition flights were the first to use Halley Field, Lexington's small grass airfield on Dr.Samuel Halley's Meadowthorpe Farm on Leestown Road.

By 1927, there was a flight school and even a few commercial flights.

In 1928, Charles Lindbergh, who had thrilled the world a year earlier with his non-stop solo flight from New York to Paris, flew into town to see a friend.

During his visit, Lindbergh remarked that Lexington's airfield was too small for current aviation needs.

As if to demonstrate, in departing, his plane nearly clipped the trees at the end of the runway.

The search for a new airport site was quickly underway, but was delayed by a more pressing threat to progress, the collapse of the stock market and the Great Depression that followed.

Leading the effort to make the most of a bad economic situation was Ed Wilder, the executive chairman of the Chamber of Commerce.

Ed Wilder really set the stage for where Lexington is in the 21st century.

Without his vision, without his push for an educated workforce and the opportunities that come with an educated workforce, we would not be the city that we are.

He helped to recruit the United States Veterans Hospital to Lexington, a huge win to take it away from some other larger cities.

So, we have the Veterans Hospital still here.

He helped recruit the US Narcotics Farm and the federal prison In addition to attracting the Federal Veterans Hospital and the US Narcotics Farm, an experimental drug treatment facility, Wilder also helped secure funds from the Federal Works Progress Administration.

Those funds built a new post office building that also housed the United States District Court serving the eastern half of the state.

Lexington's business community and churches stepped up too, helping feed hundreds of men, women, and children at the municipal soup kitchen.

There was more good news in the 1930s.

The decade started with one of the most impactful events in University of Kentucky history, the hiring of an Illinois high school coach named Adolph “Herky” Rupp on a two-year contract as the new coach of the University of Kentucky basketball team.

Rupp's arrival began the transformation of the university into a national basketball powerhouse, of Rupp into a legend in American sports, and an enduring community bond between Lexington and its Wildcats.

Another Lexington icon arrived in the 1930s as well.

In 1933, a new feature was added to Gratz Park, the Fountain of Youth, life-size statues of a boy and girl playing in a water fountain, was the bequest of author James Lane Allen.

One of his best friends was a guy named M.A.

Cassidy, who became head of the Lexington school system.

Cassidy Elementary is named for him.

And one of the things Cassidy did late in Allen's life was he would encourage schoolchildren to send letters and cards to Allen on his birthday every year.

And so, that kind of kept the ties going.

When Allen died, he didn't have any heirs, so he left his estate to build a fountain in Gratz Park dedicated to the children of Lexington.

A man who grew up in the park's Hopemont house made national news that year.

Thomas Hunt Morgan won the 1933 Nobel Prize in Physiology for his studies in genetics.

Morgan was a grandson of John Wesley Hunt and, as the University of Kentucky proudly noted, a UK graduate.

In 1934, the city got its first radio station when WLAP moved to Lexington from Louisville.

Other local developments in the ‘30s included the loss of two longtime Lexington institutions.

Over the years, portions of the Town Branch, the waterway flowing through downtown, had been walled off and covered.

In 1935, a concrete tunnel completed the covering.

The Kentucky Racing Association Track had struggled financially for years.

Racing stopped after the spring 1933 meet, and in 1935, the last of its structures was demolished.

While the Town Branch was left to flow underground, Lexington was not ready to lose the sight of horse racing.

Keeneland was formed by a group of Central Kentucky horsemen.

They came together because, for the first time in over a hundred years Lexington found itself without a racetrack.

This is after the close of the Kentucky Association Track.

And we're located right here in the horse capital of the world without a racetrack.

That just can't be.

So, these horsemen came together and created this vision to create a model racetrack to perpetuate the very finest traditions of the sport.

Led by Hal Price Headley, owner of Beaumont Farm, the horsemen considered some 20 locations for the new track before deciding on John Oliver Keene's property on Versailles Road.

On October 15, 1936, more than 8,000 fans showed up for the first day of racing.

Headley would serve as Keeneland's president until 1951, leading the development of a new kind of American racing institution, a non-profit thoroughbred center that not only provided racing fans a unique and scenic atmosphere, but also included horse auctions where buyers from around the world could purchase the Bluegrass breeding farms' finest horses.

Another important Lexington tradition that combined horses and community benefits began in 1937 when The Red Mile hosted the first Lexington Junior League Charity Horse Show.

Some local business people were skeptical when league president Marie Kittrell suggested starting a horse show to raise money for community programs, but the first show attracted 5,000 people and 216 competing horses and netted around $5,500.

One of the first beneficiaries was a new organization to nourish the creative spirit of Lexington youngsters.

In 1940, Lexington Children's Theater gave its inaugural performance at the University of Kentucky's Guignol Theater.

Although it looked like things were starting to get back to normal in Lexington, it would not be long before outside circumstances once again dramatically altered everyday life.

War in Europe had begun in 1939 when Germany invaded Poland.

Like other American cities, Lexington saw the need to prepare for possible US involvement.

In 1940, a National Defense Trade School opened at LaFayette High School to train students for defense-related industrial jobs.

Later that year, nearly 11,000 of Fayette County's 50,000 residents registered for its first peacetime draft in American history.

Although concerns about the war dominated the news, a shocking double murder claimed Lexington front pages and drew attention from the entire sports world in September 1941.

Marion Miley was the rising star in women's golf.

The young Lexington amateur's growing success in the 1930s drew new attention to the sport.

An admiring sports writer dubbed her “the flower of the fairways.” The talented 27-year-old and her mother were living at the Lexington Country Club when burglars broke in on September 28th, killing them both.The murderers were quickly apprehended.

Their trial and conviction shared the front pages in Lexington, just beneath the other tumultuous news of the time.

On December 7th, 1941, the quiet of a Sunday afternoon was disrupted by cries of newspaper boys on downtown streets as Lexingtonians learned of the bombing of Pearl Harbor.

Service members and their families once again gathered at Union Station.

More than 200 of the departing soldiers would not return.

As Central Kentuckians followed the battle news and joined their neighbors in mourning the fallen, a home front war was also underway.

Just east of Lexington, the Lexington Signal Depot at Avon was in operation by May 1942, storing ammunition, radar equipment, and other wartime supplies.

Lexington had chosen the site for its new airport on Versailles Road across from Keeneland Race Course.

But before commercial service began, the field was used as an Air Corps training center.

The first plane to land at the still-unnamed field was a B-25 bomber on July 11th, 1942.

Fayette Countians bought war bonds, rationed sugar and gasoline, and planted victory gardens.

Women moved into new roles, driving taxis and buses, and building aircraft motor parts at the Hub Tool Company on Northeastern Avenue.

They also worked in Central Kentucky's tobacco fields, the crop now a critical part of the local economy.

The farm labor shortage became so severe that German prisoners of war were brought in from camps around the state to help bring in the 1944 and 1945 tobacco crops On August 15th, 1945, Lexingtonians filled city streets to celebrate the news of Japan's surrender.

In Lexington, as across America, the postwar years were a time of economic resurgence and a renewed zest for life.

Train travel had new competition as commercial air service increased at the airport, which in 1944 was christened Blue Grass Field.

Through the new GI Bill, returning veterans enrolled at the University of Kentucky and Transylvania University.

Between 1944 and 1950, University of Kentucky enrollment more than tripled.

Because of transportation restrictions, some Keeneland meets had been canceled and others moved to Churchill Downs in Louisville during the war.

Racing fans were thrilled to be back at the course on Versailles Road for the spring 1946 meet.

Even before the war, Lexington's Calumet Farm had begun a decades-long dominance with 1941 Triple Crown winner Whirlaway and 1944 Kentucky Derby winner Pensive.

But amid its resurgence, horseracing lost one of its greats Ladies and gentlemen, we are gathered here today to pay tribute to a great soldier.

On November 4, 1947, racetracks across the nation observed a moment of silence to join Lexington in mourning the death of Man o' War.

More than 2,000 people came to the barn at Faraway Farm to file by the stallion as he laid a massive oak casket.

Since his retirement, Man o' War had attracted an average of 50,000 people a year to Central Kentucky.

Horses were Lexington's biggest celebrities in the late 1940s.

But in the downtown shopping district, Smiley Pete, a small black and white dog, was gaining his own legion of devoted fans.

The mixed-breed dog with the friendly grin mooched food from merchants, slept in store windows, and solicited pats from residents and tourists alike.

At holiday time, downtown streets were filled with families, and one local resident made that Pete was dressed appropriately for the occasion, in a big red bow.

Started by A.B.

“Happy” Chandler, WVLK Radio first signed on the air in 1947, with call letters that stood for Versailles, Lexington, Kentucky.

Lexington families were enjoying the prosperity of the post-war period.

A big attraction at Joyland Amusement Park was Dancing Under the Stars to big band stars like Duke Ellington and Artie Shaw.

Like other public places in Lexington, Joyland was segregated, allowing Black families to attend on limited days.

In 1948, members of the Black community opened the Lyric Theater on Third Street as a venue where patrons did not face discriminatory admittance or seating.

Its marquee lit up with the names of major performers such as Count Basie and Lionel Hampton.

Segregation was beginning to change, however.

In 1949, after a court ruling in favor of Lyman T. Johnson, an educator and civil rights activist, the University of Kentucky began admitting African Americans to its graduate programs, and the undergraduate programs opened to Black students a few years later.

[music playing] In 1950, the University of Kentucky opened Memorial Coliseum, a basketball arena that could seat 12,000.

At that time, it was the largest athletic facility in the South.

Very importantly, Very importantly, it was a memorial to all of our war dead from World Wars I and II.

Lexingtonians called it The House That Rupp Built.

That coach, hired back in 1930, had turned out to be a winning choice, as evidenced by the huge, ecstatic crowd that had welcomed his first national championship team at Union Station in 1948.

What many Lexingtonians might not have realized was that Rupp was also coaching the construction team.

“I was very fond of him, but I could have kicked him all the time,” recalled Hugh M.

“Bud” Meriwether, one of the project's architects.

Meriwether noted that Rupp came around fussing and fussing over the flooring [Birds Chirping] Meriwether himself was at the top of his game in shaping the look of both homes and institutional buildings in Lexington.

His historic revival-style houses gave a timeless look to neighborhoods such as Fairway, Ashland Park, and the Parkers Mill area.

He also founded a cultural group that brought big Hollywood stars Judy Garland and Bob Hope to Lexington in 1953 and ‘54, respectively, to perform in, where else, “The House That Rupp Built.” The coliseum was right across the street from the University of Kentucky's Stoll Field, and UK was doing pretty well on the gridiron.

Football coach Paul “Bear” Bryant had built the school's reputation as a powerhouse, and in 1950, the team won the Southeastern Conference title.

By the mid-1950s, Lexington had added two new hospitals, Central Baptist on Nicholasville Road and Shriners Hospital for Children on Richmond Road.

Suburban shopping grew, with the opening of stores on Southland Drive and the Eastland Shopping Center.

The television age had arrived as well.

WLEX-TV went on the air on March 15, 1955, followed two years later by WKYT.

In advertisements for car dealerships, growing subdivisions, and even the new Campbell House Hotel out on South Broadway, Lexington proclaimed itself “modern as tomorrow.” And what could be more modern than an electric typewriter?

“It won't be long until you have to promise your secretary an electric typewriter, or she won█t come to work, wrote the Lexington Herald's Thoughts of a Country Editor columnist in 1956.

The writer had just visited the new typewriter manufacturing facility of IBM, International Business Machines.

One of the world's oldest and largest technology companies had chosen Lexington for its typewriter manufacturing facility.

Lexington's first IBM Selectric rolled off the assembly line in 1956.

Recruitment and eventual landing of IBM to open their plants on the north side of Lexington is a dramatic win.

To move from Poughkeepsie, New York, to produce every Selectric that has existed in the United States in Lexington, a workforce of 50,000 people, it dramatically reshapes the city.

Neighborhoods are built because of IBM executives.

The ways that we engage in culture exist because IBM brought folks here.

When IBM comes to Lexington in the 1950s, a couple of their executives are not thrilled about being in the south.

They're not thrilled about being in Lexington, and their biggest complaint is that they can't get bagels.

They have to drive to Cincinnati because the grocery stores don't have bagels.

Now, can you imagine a Kroger not having bagels and cream cheese today?

As Lexingtonians learned about bagels, in turn, the upstate newcomers discovered an array of local delicacies.

At the track, they could sample the famous Keeneland burgoo, a brew of a stew that the track had served since the 1930s.

They could pull that new Ford Fairlane or Chevy Corvette into a space at the Parkette Drive-In for a car-hop delivery of a Poor Boy burger.

There were a number of places to catch up on the local news while grabbing a bite.

Milkshakes, grilled food, and UK sports were on the menu at Wheeler Pharmacy and Chevy Chase.

Served along with snappy beer cheese and chicken and dumplings at the Saratoga, another Chevy Chase spot, was the chance to rub elbows with everyone from college professors to socialites.

At Brooking's, a tiny soda fountain near the UK campus, they might even catch a glimpse of Lexington's now-famous basketball coach, Adolph Rupp, sitting, as always, in the third booth on the right.

He said stopping there for a bowl of the restaurant's chili before a game brought hi.. Who knows if it was the chili, but the basketball Wildcats continued to rack up trophies under Rupp.

They had just won a third NCAA title in 1951, and a fourth was upcoming in 1958.

The IBM newcomers might also have wondered about that distinctive aroma wafting through certain parts of Lexington at certain times of day.

Was that roasting peanuts?

Typewriters weren't the only national brand product made in Lexington.

In 1955, Procter & Gamble had bought local businessman W.T.

Young's Big Top peanut butter company and renamed it Jif.

Lexington's future may have been written on an IBM Selectric, but it was punctuated by some progressive city planning regarding growth and the beginning of interstate highway construction.

You're headed also in the 1950s to the recognition that there's going to need to be some plan about how to handle substantial new growth.

So, Lexington becomes the first community in the country with an urban service boundary that, in a planning and zoning sense, defines where the growth will start and stop.

Things like city services, sewers, the police depar.. those sorts of things would all happen within those boundaries, and outside it would be rural agricultural land.

Another big development that really paid off for Lexington was deciding to put the Interstates 75 and 64 outside of town rather than going through the middle of town.

Many cities now are kind of dealing with the damage done by running interstates through town and trying to undo that.

And that kind of allowed Lexington's downtown to grow without that kind of damage.

Lexington's industrial growth continued in the 1950s as other major companies opened facilities, including Square D, Train, and Dixie Cup Corporation.

With so many newcomers moving in, Lexington's suburbs continued to grow, from Eastland Park on the north to Gardenside on the south, and Gainesway to the east and Cardinal .. Also growing was the need for a variety of housing options.

In 1959, Don and Mira Ball started Ball Homes Construction Company.

Their first homes were built to meet a growing need for affordable starter homes for Lexington's first responders, who were required to live within city limits.

Another architect was designing homes with an especially modern look.

Lexington had a long history of great old architecture, but in the 1950s, we also had a very notable modernist architect who built a number of houses in Lexington.

Richard Isenhour became a very popular suburban architect, and many of the homes that he designed and built are very prized possessions now.

Many of them belong to other architects who really admire his work.

Lexington's places of the past weren't forgotten, though.

The demolition of a house built by Revolutionary War veteran Thomas Hart at Second and Mill Street inspired the formation of the Blue Grass Trust for Historic Preservation.

This group raised funds to buy and restore Hopemont, and the Gratz Park neighborhood became Lexington's first historic district.

By the end of the decade, visitors could also tour the houses at Ashland and Waveland Plantation.

[Birds Chirping] Throughout the 1950s, an effort had been underway for the University of Kentucky to expand its programs and facilities to address the state's growing need for more physicians and improved access to health care.

The idea was to create a new medical school and research hospital.

The Albert B. Chandler Medical Center broke ground in 1957 and opened its doors to patients a few years later.

Once you have a research-backed institution that has a medical school and a law school, and a traditional liberal arts college, and all of the things to make a very educated citizenry, you then can grow the type of opportunities that are available in Lexington.

In 1959, another event took place on campus that foreshadowed the social, cultural, and legal changes coming to Lexington and the nation in the 1960s.

July 11th of 1959, there was a first sit-in in Lexington at Varsity Village off the campus, which was on the campus of the University of Kentucky.

And you had five Whites and five Blacks that went there at the lunch counter.

They sat waited to be served and were not served, and they left some change and left.

This was, interestingly enough, a few months prior to the national sit-in that everyone's familiar with that took place on February 1st, 1960, in Greensboro, North Carolina.

So, .. Lexington had a sit-in movement before the national movement actually began.

The civil rights movement accelerated in Lexington despite scant coverage by local news media.

Through continuing protests, sit-ins, and legal efforts, gains were made, especially in the desegregation of public places and in education The closing of the Lyric Theater in 1963 reflected the increasing desegregation of other entertainment venues.

1963 was also the year that Transylvania University admitted its first Black student.

Meeting the legal requirements of public school desegregation took place over a number of years and culminated in the merger of the city and county school districts.

By the late 1960s, Lexington College students, like those across the nation, were challenging the status quo not only on dress and music but on a range of social issues, women's liberation, the environment, social justice, and poverty.

As student editors of the 1970 University of Kentucky yearbook put it, “We didn't do as much music this .. We were busy with social issues, revolution, and things.” Front and center was the opposition to America's involvement in the war in Vietnam.

Tension in the community reached a peak in May 1970 when the school's ROTC building burned during a student protest.

The 1960s and 1970s were tumultuous in other ways as well, bringing major changes in lifestyle throughout the community.

Families everywhere were relying more and more on television for their entertainment, and TV quality and options expanded in Lexington in the 1960s.

The first Lexington station, WLEX, began broadcasting in color in 1962, the first in Lexington and an early station nationally to do so.

That same year, Kentucky Educational Television brought the transfor.. to the state, broadcasting weekdays during the school hours from its network center in Lexington.

Lexingtonians also had new options for getting around town, literally.

Two major transportation projects were completed.

The opening of Interstate 64 and 75 interchanges improved connections between Lexington and major cities in all directions.

In 1969, a long-anticipated perimeter road around the city was completed.

Lexingtonians could drive all around the city on one road.

They dubbed it New Circle Road, even though some sections were 20 years old by the time the last segment was completed.

So, as individuals or families are moving out into the outer part of the city, and maybe the employment or the jobs are actually located in the central business district.

These transportation projects allow individuals to move from their residence to their jobs much more quickly, and so it really accommodates that grow.. The age of the suburban mall had arrived with the opening of the Turfland Mall on Harrodsburg Road in 1967.

In 1971, the much larger Fayette Mall opened on Nicholasville Road.

Its 800,000 square feet of shopping space on 60 acres was reflective of the period's focus on retail growth.

Along with shopping, the dining scene was changing as well.

Fancy food, fast food, student-friendly food, all arrived in Lexington in the late 1960s and early 1970s.

When he opened his restaurant on South Broadway, Stanley Demos brought a new level of elegant dining to the city, with a French-inspired menu and a club-like atmosphere.

The Coach House quickly became a Lexington favorite and gained national acclaim with its signature Crab Demos appetizer and other recipes.

For casual and drive-in dining, Jerry's restaurants were gaining popularity not just in Lexington, but throughout the Midwest and South.

Two Lexington partners, Jerry Lederer and Warren Rosenthal, had formed Jerrico to franchise the concept, and by 1965, there were 53 Jerry's across six states, with many more to come.

In 1969, another Lexingtonian, Jim Patterson, launched a restaurant on Southland Drive that would also become a Jerrico franchise concept, a fast-food seafood place called Long John Silver's.

A young Lexington entrepreneur, John Y. Brown, Jr., bought Kentucky Fried Chicken from founder Harland Sanders and turned it into a worldwide success, although he sold his interest in the company seven years later and eventually went into politics.

The mood on the University of Kentucky campus was much more tranquil in the post-Vietnam War era, but students were still hungry for a .. and, like students in every era, just plain hungry.

They found fellowship and food in several new restaurants in the campus neighborhood.

Detroit native Joe Bologna, who had been a US Air Force cook in Vietnam, launched an Italian restaurant, famous for its pizzas, but even more famous for its giant garlic-drenched breadsticks.

Two buddies, Bob Tolley and Bob Hollopeter, combined their names and their mutual love of burgers to create Tolly-Ho, also the place for all day breakfast and late, late-night conversation.

Alfalfa opened in 1973, on $2,000 pooled by a group of students and the promise of a free meal to anyone who brought their own chair This hub of music, poetry readings, and vegetarian vibes introduced such culinary innovations as brunch and Creole and Cajun-style food to Lexington.

As Lexington continued to grow out and around, the downtown area took on a different personality and presented new challenges for its future.

The railroad tracks that had run down Main Street had been removed.

Like Union Station, long demolished, they were no longer needed in the age of automobile and air travel.

What was needed?

New space for public offices.. More parking lots?

Perhaps a new Civic Center?

Since there were now over 108,000 people, with an additional 65,000 or so living in the county, how about a new form of government?

In 1972, Lexington and Fayette County voters approved something unheard of in Kentucky and rare across the nation, the merger of city and county governments.

Not everyone thought a merged government would result in more efficiency and improved services.

A lawsuit challenged the merger, but the formation of the Lexington-Fayette Urban County Government was upheld just three days before it took effect on January 1, 1974.

More controversy unfolded around the new Civic Center.

The construction of Rupp Arena leveled much of the South Hill neighborhood to create a giant parking lot.

And that's always a trade-off.

Lexington, because it was a very prosperous community early in the 19th century, had a lot of really nice buildings because there were a lot of rich people to build them.

Building the center and its parking lot on an 11-acre site off Broadway meant tearing down more than 130 houses, among them the oldest remaining structure in the city, the house built by Adam Rankin in 1784.

As it was facing imminent demolition, the Blue Grass Trust really led the efforts to relocate it to a parcel on South Mill that we purchased, literally put the house on a flatbed, drove it up the hill.

We placed it in its current location, did some exterior work to it, put a protective conservation restriction on it, and then sold it in 1972. put a protective conservation Then there was the debate over what the Civic Center would include.

Initially, a sports arena was ruled out, but as University of Kentucky leaders pointed out, Memorial Coliseum was now growing too small to accommodate Lexington's legions of basketball fans.

Why not build a football stadium downtown at the same time?

In 1974, construction began.

The basketball arena was in, so was the football stadium, but out on Cooper Drive instead of downtown.

By fall of the next year, the new Rupp Arena, named to honor the longtime UK basketball coach Adolph Rupp, was finally ready for action.

Its first event wasn't even a basketball game, although Rupp was among the 20,000 people who turned out for the October 17th, 1976, concert by his friend Lawrence Welk.

Of course, there would be plenty of basketball to come in Rupp Arena, and Coach Rupp, who had retired from coaching in 1972 was a star attraction at the first basketball game in the arena on November 27th.

The roaring cheers of 23,266 fans moved him to tears.

But the availability of a venue big enough to host big concerts, at a time when concerts were big, was an important step toward drawing both visitors and residents downtown.

Well, Rupp Arena was very important step to drawing both visitors and when it was built in 1976, because it not only provided a space for basketball-crazy Kentuckians to come and watch the Cats play, but it also provided space for big concerts to come to Lexington, and it made Lexington a regional destination for major concerts, as Rupp Arena allowed for large concerts that before, the biggest facility they had to play in was Alumni Coliseum.

And when Rupp Arena was built, they also decided to renovate the Opera House into a performing arts space, and that really helped jumpstart a lot of the performing arts in Lexington, which then grew even further when the University of Kentucky built Singletary Center.

It wasn't just national groups that were filling stages around town.

The arts had been an important part of Lexington's identity since its Athens of the West days in the early 1800s.

Music and the arts flourished again in the 1970s.

In 1972, Lexington formed an Arts and Cultural Council, later renamed LexArts, to support Lexington's varied and growing arts community.

They were long-established groups like Lexington Children's Theater, the Studio Players Community Theater Group, Lexington Singers, and the Central Kentucky Youth Orchestras.

The Lexington Philharmonic, which had begun as a volunteer group, had grown to professional orchestra status, and new organizations began, including the Lexington Chamber Chorale and the Lexington Ballet Company.

The Junior League helped turn an historic house at Walnut and Third Streets into the Living Arts and Science Center for Children.

The Lexington Art League began holding outdoor shows, an idea that would grow into an annual tradition, the Woodland Art Fair.

Lexington's nightlife scene was diverse as well.

While disco fans hustled the night away at Lexington's Johnny Angel, the library, and circus, Bluegrass enthusiasts gathered at the Holiday Inn's Red Slipper Lounge to hear up-and-coming banjo player J.D.

Crowe and his band.

Crowe and his band were destined to go on to bigger stages across America, as was another group that was in Lexington at the time.

Exile, the rock band that began in Central Kentucky in the 1960s, worked its way to the top of the charts in 1978 with “Kiss You All Over.” Lexington had another nationally known artist in residence with a larger-than-life presence.

Henry Faulkner's lifestyle was as colorful as his fanciful and prolific paintings and his poetry.

The Simpson County native traveled and painted in locations around the world before making Lexington one of his homes.

In the 1970s, he was a celebrated and well-known Lexingtonian, usually seen in the company of his pet goat, Alice.

“It is life that is long and art that is fleeting,” he wrote.

But for Faulkner, it was not to be.

He was killed in an auto accident on West Third Street and Broadway in 1981 at age 57, leaving behind thousands of highly sought-after paintings.

By the end of the 1970s, renovation was underway on a 1904 building on North Mill Street that would serve as the headquarters for LexArts and other arts organizations.

Its name reflects a description that fit Lexington then and continues to.

ArtsPlace.

Lexington's tourist attractions also expanded in the 1970s.

The childhood home of Mary Todd Lincoln was restored as a museum, telling its story through period furnishings, portraits, and other artifacts from the Todd and Lincoln families.

Visitors, who took a short drive out scenic Old Frankfort Pike, discovered jeweled bibelots, large dollhouses, and a newly added shell grotto, a building whose interior walls.. with thousands of seashells.

The Headley-Whitney Museum reflected the vision and works of George Headley, a former jeweler to the stars in California and New York.

Lexington's most popular tourist draw, however, continued to be horses.

But by the 1970s, many farms were closing their gates to visitors.

They just couldn't manage the crowds.

The Commonwealth of Kentucky stepped up with an innovative solution.

A park with a museum, show facilities, and fields filled with live horses.

All on 1,200 acres, just a short drive from downtown.

A life-size statue of Man o' War welcomed visitors to the new Kentucky Horse Park in 1978.

“You only have one chance in a lifetime to build a park, and that's now.

Just think what New York City would be without Central Park.

That's what Lexington developer Alex Campbell had to say in 1980 about a new Lexington non-profit's ambitious plan to raise $1.5 million to turn a gravel parking lot into a park.

The Triangle Foundation was spearheaded by Campbell and other Lexingtonians who each pledged $10,000 to create a park in the 1.5-acre triangular lot.

The park had been proposed since the building of the Civic Center, but remained mired in red tape until Campbell organized the citizen effort.

Triangle Park opened in July 1982 with its cascading water wall of fountains and flowering trees providing a bit of urban green space.

It was at the center of a city bursting with the development After World War II, a lot of older buildings had gotten in bad shape, and in the ‘70s and '80s, there was a lot of development.

Garvice Kincaid built a big bank building, and then the Webb brothers built a number of towers.

When it was completed in 1979, Kincaid Towers' 22 floors made it the tallest building in the city.

But few Lexingtonians would forget what happened during its construction.

The building had been chosen as a location for filming scenes for a movie called Steel.

The story of a construction crew's race against time to complete a steel tower.

A scene called for the crew foreman to fall from the building.

Hollywood stuntman A. J. Bakunas successfully made the fall from 110 feet, but decided to fall again from a higher point in an effort to set a record for free-fall jumps.

When the airbag on which he landed split, he was fatally injured, to the horror of hundreds who had come to watch the well-publicized stunt.

Kincaid Towers was named to honor Garvice Kincaid, a Lee County native who, as a banker, insurance executive, and financier, became one of the most successful business people in Lexington between the 1940s and his death in 1975.

Lexington's other high-rise icon, and dozens of other developments across Lexington, were built by two other eastern Kentucky transplants, brothers Donald and Dudley Webb from Whitesburg.

Their firm, the Webb Companies, led an unprecedented period of development and revitalization in the 1980s.

Hotels, office complexes, shopping centers, condominiums.

Between 1980 and 1987, the Webb Companies were at the helm of dozens of developments, from the heart of downtown stretching all the way to New Circle Road and beyond.

Victorian Square turned an entire block of 19th-century buildings into the facade for an office and shopping complex, and just across Broadway, Festival Market opened with more boutiques and offices.

But the company's most visible addition to the skyline was the Lexington Financial Center.

At 31 stories, this new glass edifice dethroned Kincaid Towers as the city's tallest structure.

There can be no doubt that the Webb brothers shaped the skyline of modern Lexington, and their building of the Radisson Hotel across fro.. was done with an eye to helping the city gain an event it coveted, yet had been rejected for due to lack of hotel accommodations.

In 1985, basketball fans from around the country crowded into Rupp Arena to see one of t.. Eighth-seed Villanova bested the number one seed Georgetown in the smallest city that had ever been chosen to host the championship.

Basketball fans weren't the only noteworthy visitors in the 1980s.

Lexingtonians were used to seeing sheiks and other international visitors at the races and horse sales but were nonetheless eager to catch a glimpse of England's Queen Elizabeth II when she made her first of five visits to the city to attend the inaugural .. named in her honor at Keeneland in 1984.

Nor was every big development idea of the decade a success.

The idea for a 50-story World Coal Center never materialized, leaving a hole on Main Street where the old Phoenix Hotel had stood.

Visitors coming for the NCAA Finals found a temporary park in the space.

The thought of an 11-acre lake just off Main Street, Lake Lexington, elicited a lot of smiles, but downtown gained no paddle boats, canoes, or waterfront condos.

There was a lot of news to report in Lexington in the 1980s, and one less newspaper to cover it.

The national trend of newspapers closing and merging came to Lexington.

Since the days of the Kentucky Gazette in the late kentucky 1700s dozens of newspapers had come and gone in the city.

Both the Morning Lexington Herald and the Afternoon Lexington Leader dated to the late 1800s.

And while sharing ownership and a press building, their separate staffs competed.

The papers also often took opposing editorial views.

That ended with the merger of the two papers in 1983 to become the Lexington Herald-Leader.

Overall, though, the decade ended as optimistically as it had begun.

A new perimeter road around the city, Man o' War Boulevard, had been completed.

Another historic hotel building, the LaFayette, had been repurposed as city-county government offices.

And there were several new reasons for Lexingtonians to come downtown.

A farmer's market, established in the 1970s, had grown greatly in popularity.

Downtown had a hot new restaurant.

“A La Lucie is the type of eating and drinking place that the downtown revival spawns and needs,” the Herald-Leader food critic wrote in 1985.

The restaurant quickly became a Lexington favorite, with its arts-filled decor and a menu that featured buttermilk quail and other inventive offerings.

Owner and chef Lucie Slone Meyers was the culinary genius behind a bevy of inventive eating spots in 1980s and 1990s.

Among new corporate citizens was Valvoline, a division of Ashland Oil.

The 1988 opening of the Toyota Motor Manufacturing plant in nearby Scott County provided a boost for the entire region.

Georgetown is very close to Lexington, so when Toyota set up an assembly plant there, it attracted other automotive suppliers to all in and around Lexington.

So, if you look at Lexington's economy today its primarily education, health care, and manufacturing.

And all of that really began in the second half of the 20th century, when Lexington transitioned from a very agricultural economy to more service industries and manufacturing.

In Lexington, Toyota made an impact almost immediately with the announcement in 1989 of a $1 million endowment to the University of Kentucky library system.

Later that year, there was more library news in Lexington, with the opening of the new main branch of the public library on Main street Just in time, because a book came out in 1990 that many Central Kentuckians were eager to get their hands on.

The Bluegrass Conspiracy, a story of drug dealings, murder, and other crimes tied to Lexington and the Bluegrass, was written by Sally Denton, whose investigative reports on the story had begun in her 1980 stint at the local television station WKYT.

In the 1990, Lexington became a lot more focused on how to embrace the future while honoring the past.

IBM had reached its peak in Lexington in 1989, with over 5,700 employees producing more than four million typewriters a year.

The firm announced a new product, a laser printer.

Two years later, IBM's big blue logo left Lexington, but tech manufacturing remained.

The sale of IBM's printer, keyboard, and typewriter operations resulted in a new company, Lexmark.

Other business developments in the decade included an expansion at Fayette Mall and the opening of stores at Hamburg Place.

Kuni Toyoda added to Lexington's long tradition as a center of restaurant entrepreneurship with his seed restaurant group's rapid national expansion of the Italian fast-food concept, Fazoli's.

He began expanding beyond fast food with the opening of the popular Bella Notte in 1997.

A new downtown park opened in 1992 Inspired by its earlier success with Triangle Park, the Triangle Foundation upped its fundraising goal to create Thoroughbred Park on Midland Avenue at the east end of Main Street.

As in Lexington's earlier days, horses once again ran downtown, this time in the form of life-size bronze horses created by Lexington artist Gwen Reardon.

Considering that Lexington had three indoor malls, numerous suburban shopping centers, and a large new retail development under construction on Hamburg Place Horse Farm east of downtown, it's remarkable the Wolf Wile Company held on as a downtown department store until 1992.

The store had been a downtown institution for 103 years, and its current building dated to the 1940s.

It had been the only department store downtown since 1980, but it was time for a retiring-from-business sale, said 86-year-old Joe Wile, Sr.

Preservationists and city leaders immediately began exploring new uses for the store's beautiful, modernist-style building, and it became the headquarters for the James N. Gray Construction Company.

The same month that Wolf Wile's closed, two other Lexington landmarks found new life The Kentucky Theater reopened.

The city had purchased and renovated the elegant 1920s movie palace after it had been damaged by a fire in the late 1980s.

The old Carnegie Library building in Gratz Park found a new mission as a center for literacy and learning.

In recent years, some of the nation's most prominent authors have come to Lexington because they're attracted by the quality of life, the employment at universities, and also a really dynamic literary community that's very supportive.

One of the keys to that is the Carnegie Center .. When the library built a new location downtown in 1989, there was a lot of debate about what to do with this building.

And the purpose they came up with was creating the Carnegie Center, which focuses on literacy and literature at all level So, it ranges everything from after-school tutoring for about 200 school kids and volunteer tutors to literary events for some of Kentucky's most noted writers.

In 1994, Lexington's arts community made some important progress.

The first of what would become a regular event, Gallery Hop, attracted nearly 2,500 people to visit 22 museums, galleries, and studios staying open in the evening.

[Opera Music Playing] At the University of Kentucky, the opera theater program was building a national reputation as one of the top programs in the United States under new director Dr.Everett McCorvey.

UK opera student Gregory Turay won the National Metropolitan Opera auditions in 1995, the first UK student to do so, and launching on to an international career.

The spirit of rebuilding and rediscovery in Lexington in the 1990s also found its way out Old Frankfort Pike.

The McConnell Springs, around which Lexington was founded, had seemed forgotten by many and had actually become a waste dump.

But had it always fascinated other Lexingtonians, a dream to reclaim the springs had been gaining support from local environmental and history organizations as well as private citizens.

It finally came to fruition in 1993.

The city cleaned up the area, Bank One donated some of the land, and a citizens group, Friends of McConnell Springs, raised the remaining funds [river flowing] to purchase the land and to make the area a place for public recreation.

McConnell Springs Park opened in 1994, and in the following year, an annual Founders Day celebration began.

[Bagpipes Playing] Well, it's important for a community to know its roots, and that's what Founders Day is all about here in Lexington.

Not many cities our size, if any, know the actual site of their founding, and never in their mind have they restored it through the efforts of a lot of community volunteers over time.

So, the fact that we've rescued this place and kind of point to the actual site [clanging] of that first encampment where Lexington was named in 1775 is really a unique thing and something that we have a privilege of trying to celebrate every year through events like Founders Day.

Two new museums opened in Lexington in the 1990s.

A public-private partnership added the Lexington Children's Museum to Victorian Square.

And at Blue Grass Airport, a longtime volunteer effort led by Lexington orthopedic surgeon and pilot Dr.

George Gumbert resulted in the opening of the Aviation Museum of Kentucky.

By the end of the decade, two famous longtime celebrations left the Lexington social scene.

For nearly 40 years, two Lexington horse industry hostesses, Marylou Whitney and Anita Madden, had held court at Derby Eve parties before the big race.

Both were star-studded events, but quite different in tone.

The private, old Hollywood elegance of the Whitney Gathering, was a contrast to the flamboyant pop culture atmosphere of the Madden Charity Fundraiser.

The Whitney Derby Party tradition ended in 1993 after the death of C.V.

Whitney.

Nearly 3,000 people attended the last Madden Soiree in 1998.

As the 20th century came to a close, it was a city that had grown and changed dramatically in just a few decades.

And it looked to a new century with a welcoming spirit.

In 1999, Lexington became the first city in Kentucky to adopt a Fairness Ordinance.

A new city event, the Festival Latino, celebrated the city's Hispanic population.

By the 1990s, Hispanic workers had become an essential part of the horse industry and agriculture, and many moved to Lexington.

Many international cultures were now part of the conversation around the campfire in Lexington, a city that not so long ago had considered bagels an unusual item, now abounded with foods and other cultural influences from around the world.

The influx of immigrants from other cultures immigrants from other cultures in Lexington has changed Lexington.

It's actually a continuation of the very founding of Lexington.

Lexington originated with people coming from other places to create this community, and has made Lexington more multicultural, more open and welcoming to people.

And it's created a vibrant community that is really a thing of beauty in Kentucky.

As with any major mark of time, the arrival of the 21st century inspired musing about how Lexington's past and future might mesh.

“In 50 years,” pondered Herald-Leader columnist Don Edwards, “would basketball continue to be as popular?

Would there still be horses in the Bluegrass?” Lexington without basketball?

No way.

Winning basketball coaches had come and gone, and there continued to be NCAA men's championships.

But Wildcat teams in other sports brought home titles to celebrate, including national championships in cross-country, women's volleyball, and co-ed rifle.

And don't forget cheerleading.

The UK team was well on its way to winning more national cham.. than any other school in the history of the competition.

The women's basketball team was also gaining increased national recognition and hometown support, with regular appearances in the NCAA tournament.

Basketball fans also came to Lexington from around the state every year for the Sweet 16 Boys High School Championship.

That didn't mean there wasn't room for a new team in town, and the city excitedly welcomed the Lexington Legends baseball team in 2001.

Horses?

Lexington actually began the new century with a mania for horses.

Literally.

The LexArts Horse Mania Project put 79 uniquely painted life-size fiberglass horses all over town.

The project was so popular with residents and visitors alike that Lexington repeated it in 2010 and 2022.

But where there are horses, the non-fiberglass kind, there must also be land.

And the issue of farmland preservation had long been a community concern.

Lexington became the first local government in Kentucky to institute a purchase of development rights to preserve land surrounding the city.

They wanted to preserve the rural characteristics, the horse farms, some of the major amenities that made Lexington different.

And these are amenities that have value for, for the residents.

They are attributes that are useful in terms of attracting businesses and families to the area.

Lexington's beautiful farms and thoroughbred traditions were one reason that Hollywood came to town in 2002, filming at Keeneland, farms, and other locations, and enlisting numerous Lexingtonians as extras in the story of the Depression-era champion Seabiscuit.

There were some other thrilling developments that year, too.

Not surprisingly, the new century was time for a new courthouse, Lexington 6, for those who haven't been keeping count.

The modern Robert F. Stephens Courthouse complex opened in 2002.

[Screaming] Thrilling?

Well, that part came later when a new participatory Halloween tradition started, a Michael Jackson-inspired “Thriller” parade down Main Street, with residents of all ages doing their best zombie impressions.

When the new courthouse opened, the building, a block away that had served the city for a century, was not demolished, nor forgotten.

The old courthouse became the temporary home of the Lexington History Museum.

The old courthouse was this big, hulking, empty space in the middle of downtown.

There was some discussion of, well, maybe we should tear it down, which just tearing it down would have cost millions of dollars, but there was a really - by this time, people had gotten a lot better about reusing old buildings and renovating them.

[music playing] Not all historic events are positive.

In 2006, Lexington became a town in shock and mourning when on Sunday, August 27th, Comair Flight 5191 crashed after takeoff at the Blue Grass Airport.

Forty-nine of the 50 people on board were killed.

Most were friends and neighbors from the Lexington area In their memory, a sculpture was placed in the Remembrance Garden of the University of Kentucky Arboretum.

Forty-nine stainless steel birds in flight over a base of granite.

A memento from a loved one was placed in each bird.

Lexington had a variety of nicknames over its history.

Athens of the West, Horse Capital of the World, and in 2009, it gained a mascot.

Big Lex was unveiled.

A horse, of course!

And his look was based on an image of one of the greatest stallions of the 19th century, whose name was also Lexington.

So, why would anyone be surprised?

Well, unlike the original horse, Big Lex was blue.

Movie makers were back in Lexington that year, too, to film a story of a horse known as Big Red, the great 1973 Triple Crown winner, Secretariat.

Secretariat wasn't a Lexington native and never raced in Lexington in real life.

Although he did fly into Blue Grass Airport on his way to retirement at Claiborne Farm in Bourbon County.

Fueled largely by horses and history, tourism was taking on international importance.

The World Equestrian Games in 2010 were made possible by the investment back in the 1970s in the Kentucky Horse Park.

And when the Games chose Lexington as a site, that became a natural venue because it was one of the few venues in the world that was really built for equestrian sports.

The prestigious World Equestrian Games had never been held in the United States before.

Competitors came from 58 countries to demonstrate their skills and disciplines, such as show jumping and dressage, and the competition was broadcast worldwide.

And Lexington wanted to take advantage of that exposure The Equestrian Games prompted a flurry of work on attractions and amenities that would not only greet visitors, but provide post-game benefits for the community.

Like more downtown restaurants, including a local favorite, Dudley's, that moved from its original location in the historic Dudley School Building on Mill Street to the 1889 Northern Bank Building on Short Street.

Major projects included the new Alltech Arena at the Horse Park, as well as the first phase of the Legacy Trail, an 11-mile paved path for walking and biking between the Horse Park and the north side of Lexington.

One of the things the World Equestrian Games did, it's like the old saying, you've got to clean up the house when you've got company coming.

It forced Lexington to not only invest in the Horse Park, but to clean up a lot of downtown, to do a lot of projects like the Legacy Trail, to really improve the quality of life in Lexington, and make it more attractive to visitors as well.

Horse-loving company came to Lexington again in 2015, when Keeneland proved that the track and Lexington had the capacity to host the Breeders' Cup.

The Breeders' Cup would return in 2020 and 2022.

We've been so fortunate to host the Breeders' Cup three times.

And the reason that they return is the experience that they not only have within the gates of Keeneland, but it extends beyond into the city of Lexington.

From the moment visitors get off their plane and they're served a Kentucky bourbon ball at the airport.

They listen to Bluegrass music, they go into the hotels and the restaurants and they're adorned in purple.

It's the arts, it's music, it's local members of the community giving up their time to create a Breeders' Cup festival.

Those are the types of thing that keep these world class events coming back to Lexington.

We do it better than anyone else.

Whoa!

Bill Alley's comment had nothing to do with horses.

It was his reaction when he saw a photograph of the long descent he and 249 others would make as they rappelled from Lexington's tallest building as part of a 2012 fundraiser, Brave the Blue.

Daredevils were invited to take the plunge down the Lexington Financial Center to raise funds for the Lexington Council of the Boy Scouts of America.

Piece of cake!

And the following year, 79-year-old Wini Yunker was one of the rappellers.

After all, it was only 413 feet down.

Whoa!

New perspectives, and not just from hundreds of feet up, were impacting Lexington in the 2010s.

There has been just an accelerated interest, commitment, curiosity about race relations in Lexington, which is good.

Now there is not only a concerted, but an intentional effort to make sure that we include the Black experience.

In 2012, the East End's Lyric Theater was reborn as the Lyric Theater and Cultural Center.

It was the beginning of a number of ways in which Lexington began illuminating the history of its Black community.

In 2017, the Isaac Murphy Memorial Art Garden unveiled its first piece of public art.

The garden, honoring Black jockey Isaac Murphy, is located at the trailhead of the Legacy Trail on part of the East End property where he had lived.

Even amid the COVID pandemic, which came to Lexington in March of 2020, Lexingtonians continued to find new ways to reimagine their future.

A citizen's effort, Take Back Cheapside, initiated the reimagining of the traditional market area adjacent to Lexington's old courthouse.

Instead of reflecting its past as a slave market, the space became Henry A. Tandy Centennial Park.

Named for the freed slave who became a successful entrepreneur and whose skill as a stonemason added beauty to numerous Lexington buildings.

By 2020, when the park was dedicated, there were many reimaginings of Lexington that could be found.

There were some new buildings downtown, bu.. also a new appreciation for history.

Really in the 21st century, we've seen a revitalization of downtown with a lot of new hotels and then especially renovated buildings.

Lexington's first skyscraper, built in 1914, is now our fanciest hotel, the 21c Museum Hotel.

On Manchester Street, the Pepper Distillery was restored as the center of a long-proposed entertainment district.

The women of Lexington finally got a permanent public sculpture with the installation of “Stand" on Vine Street, 100 years after Lexington's suffragettes triumphed in achieving women's right to vote.

At their feet, a new Town Branch trail followed a course atop Lexington's historic hidden water way part of an ambitious 22-mile Greenway Corridor connecting downtown parks and plazas with West End neighborhoods and Lexington's world-famous rural landscape.

A rural landscape now including some 30,000 acres of protected farmland on nearly 300 farms.

Lexington, I think, is in a really good spot today.

We are a city that has embraced our past, that learns from its history and attempmts is continuing to attempt to grow and do better.

We've worked to protect those signature industries that have been with us since before 1775 while still continuing to innovate in the 21st century.

You can, in Lexington, in the same day the same hour, be on a historic horse farm that's been producing derby winners since the derby started 150 years ago and be in one of the most innovative, technologically advanced institutions in the country.

One of Lexington's fastest growing 21st century industries has a foundation nearly as old as the city itself, medicine, which began with Transylvania University's medical school in 1799.

Our health care sector has grown significantly over the last several decades.

We went from having about 8% of our non-farm employment being health care to about 12% from 1974 to 2022.

So, health care has been a major change.

It's improved in terms of the quality of care that residents and residents of the region have received.

The 2020s found Lexington looking towards its 250th birthday by celebrating new accomplishments and continuing to expand its community and civic life.

Rupp Arena and the Civic Center, along with Memorial Coliseum, got major refreshes.

Lexington's historic Town Branch, long hidden under the city, was brought into view again with the creation of Gatton Park adjacent to the Civ.. Lexington also added its first park with Kentucky River access, Kelley's Landing.

The old courthouse had been restored, including the Visitor Center and a restaurant by Central Kentucky chef Ouita Michel, whose new takes on Kentucky food traditions and a bevy of national honors was helping build Lexington's reputation as a great town for foodies.

Speaking of food, the Farmers' Market now had a permanent home in Tandy Park.

Its pavilion was now a place for community celebration.

The Lexington History Museum had now found a permanent home in the historic Hunt-Morgan House.

And new sports were taking the spotlight in major ways.

Soccer's popularity had been growing in Lexington, as it was nationally for decades.

And in the 2020s, the city gained both a professional soccer team and a large new soccer complex.

Lexington athletes in a wide range of sports were bringing recognition to the city.

Athletes with connections to the University of Kentucky brought home medals in the 2020 and 2024 Olympics.

Among them was Lee Kiefer, a Paul Laurence Dunbar High School graduate and UK medical student who won America's first individual gold medal in foil fencing.

In 2025, Kiefer added another first of her accomplishments when she became Team USA's gold medal winner at the Women's Senior World Championships.

Semiquincentennial.

It's a big word that reflects a great achievement.

The celebration of 250 years.

If a 21st century artist climbed atop Transylvania University's Old Morrison Hall, what would the semiquincentennial view show?

Tall office towers, roads busy with traffic, and airplanes crossing the sky.

Hundreds of church steeples and houses of worship.

Some as old as the city itself.

Others, modern megachurches.

Reflecting the dozens of denominations and faiths calling Lexington home.

So many neighborhoods in all directions.

And parks.

Some that began with the city.

And others, brand new.

Horses to be sure.

Grazing in green fields as they did long ago.

And others racing in bronze along a downtown street.

Too far to see perhaps, but still there.

Far off in the distance, an 18th century ferry.

Still carrying travelers across the Kentucky River.

We have a wonderfully rich history in our community, and it's a very diverse history.

And it is an area that is known across the world because of the thoroughbred industry and horses in general.

But it is also an area that's very hometown.

And so, we run the gamut.

People find it a very pleasant place to visit and to live.

And it's got stories from the distant past and the recent past and the present that are just varied and fascinating.

And we have the historic atmosphere and buildings and beautiful land and stone walls and all the things to go with it.

The Lexington story is fascinating because it's such a testament to a dream of pioneer settlers to come to a new area, to carve a city out of literally a wilderness.

And you see that vision through every part of Lexington's history.

From the very earliest days to the time that Lexington was known as the Athens of the West.

Medicine, education, culture, the arts all came together to weave a wonderful tapestry of Lexington's story.

When I think about Lexington Lexington and its 250-year history, I think that it's important that we reflect on memory, place, and identity.

Where do we go from here?

And how can we make sure that we make Lexington a better community?

In many ways, Lexington still has lot of that Athens of the West legacy with the University of Kentucky and other educational institutions.

But I think the thing that really attracts people to Lexington is that it's a big enough city to have a lot of economic opportunities a lot of lifestyle opportunities, but it's small enough where people still know each other and still interact with each other.

And I think that's really the secret sauce to Lexington is been being big enough, yet small enough to be really a comfortable place to live and a beautiful place to live.

Lexingtonians want every person to come here and realize how incredible it is.

And so, we work really hard and we're really passionate about being able to share that with people.

I don't know of many other towns in the country that are willing to do that.

To say, “This is who we are, who we were, help us be who we're going to be.” So, how does a city begin its 251st year?

Where it began.

By celebrating its unique place in the American story.

A city named to reflect the hope of a new nation.

As Lexington's new generations learn about the beginning of their hometown and the lives of those who shaped its destiny, one wonders, what challenges and opportunities will they face in coming years?

How will their ideas and dreams add to the Lexington story?

How will they shape the future of their city?

A city that, at 250 years and counting, is a conversation still to be continued, and a place where a verse from the past may be remembered fondly.

“But Lexington will ever be, the loveliest and the best; a paradise thou art to me, sweet Athens of the West.” Funding for this program is made possible in part by the KET Endowment for Kentucky Productions.

[music playing]