Lexington-area residents enjoy an abundance of cultural and recreational activities and attractions. A rejuvenated downtown features Triangle Park, a 1.5-million-acre oasis of pear trees and cascading waterways; Gratz Park historic area; Victorian Square, an entire city block of restored turn-ofthe-century buildings transformed into fine shops; and Dudley Square, a renovated 1800s schoolhouse with a craft center and restaurant. For strolling and browsing, the ArtsPlace is a multi-purpose arts center which houses a gallery showcasing the works of Central Kentucky artists, and is also the site of free music and dance performances.
One of Lexington's best-known attractions is Kentucky Horse Park, a 1,200-acre tribute to the animal that makes the area famous. The park features a larger-than-life-size statue of the champion racehorse Man O'War; more than 50 breeds of horses, from racing thoroughbreds to miniature ponies; twin theaters, and the International Museum of the Horse, which traces the history of horses. Special events include horse shows, rodeos, polo matches, and national competitions involving horses and their riders or trainers. In 2005 the museum will present an exhibit dedicated to the life and work of Henry Clay, famous Kentucky horseman and one of the most influential senators in U.S. history.
The Spendthrift Training Center is an operating horse farm and training facility for more than 4,000 thoroughbreds, including two Triple Crown winners. Visitors learn how horses are trained, view a multimedia film, and tour the farm itself. The Kentucky Horse Center provides tours of thoroughbred training facilities, including barns and training tracks.
Many sights in the Lexington area are points of historic interest. The Lexington History Museum (free admission), Lexington's newest attraction, is housed in the beautiful old Fayette County Courthouse (circa 1900). Inaugural exhibits include a timeline of the area's history, a photographic study of Lexington's African American community and a special display of the IBM Selectric Typewriter, once produced locally. Perryville Battlefield in nearby Perryville, Kentucky is the site of Kentucky's bloodiest, and most important, Civil War battle. The battle marked a fatal loss of the initiative for the South. Each October, the battle is re-enacted; throughout the year, living history activities with costumed interpreters are available.
Henry Clay's twenty-room mansion, Ashland, is furnished with Clay family heirlooms and set on 20 acres of woodland and formal gardens. Hopemont, the Hunt-Morgan House, is a Federal-style home built in 1814 for Kentucky's first millionaire, John Wesley Hunt; it was also the boyhood home of Lexington's first mayor, Charlton Hunt, Confederate General John Hunt Morgan, and geneticist and Nobel Prize winner Thomas Hunt Morgan. The restored house features a collection of Civil War memorabilia, early nineteenth-century paintings, a garden, and a courtyard. Built in 1802, the Mary Todd Lincoln House is the former first lady's childhood home. The Georgian-style building contains displays of personal articles that once belonged to the Todd-Lincoln families, including part of Mary's Meissen china collection. The downtown Lexington Cemetery was chartered in 1848 and features landscaped grounds, two lakes, and monuments to such Kentucky greats as statesman Henry Clay, Confederate General John Hunt Morgan, the Mary Todd Lincoln family, and author James Lane Allen. An elegant Greek Revival mansion built in 1847 is the center of the 10-acre Waveland State Shrine, named for the acres of wind-blown bluegrass that once surrounded this historical complex. The home is furnished in nineteenth-century style and is surrounded by servant's quarters, a country store, gardens, an orchard, and a craft shop. Transylvania University, founded in 1780, was the first college west of the Alleghenies and features the Old Morrison Hall, built in 1833; Patterson Cabin, built by Lexington's pioneer founder Robert Patterson and perhaps the first building constructed in Lexington; and the Mitchell Fine Arts Center, housing the Morlan Gallery and a rare collection of scientific apparatus.
Nature can be enjoyed at Lexington-area attractions such as the University of Kentucky Landscape Garden Center, a collection of plants, flowers, and herbs managed by the Horticulture and Landscape Architecture Department in the College of Agriculture. Raven Run Nature Sanctuary, a 274-acre park dedicated to the preservation of the Kentucky River Palisades, features more than 400 species of wild-flowers and a 7-mile network of hiking trails. The Lexington Cemetery is nationally recognized as one of America's most beautiful arboretums and is listed in the National Register of Historic Places for landscape design.
Lexington was an acknowledged center for art and culture as early as the mid-1800s, earning the nickname "Athens of the West." The commitment to culture continues today. The Lexington Arts and Cultural Council (LACC) was formed in 1989 through a merger of two former arts organizations. The LACC operates two facilities in downtown Lexington, ArtsPlace and the Downtown Arts Center, providing high quality performance space, galleries, rehearsal space and office space for nonprofit arts organizations. At these locations, the LACC organizes visual art exhibitions and performances showcasing the region's creative talent. The Council is located downtown in a renovated 1904 Beaux-Arts Classical building called ArtsPlace that originally housed the Lexington YMCA. ArtsPlace is a working center for individual and group activities in the visual and performing arts and features the juried work of Kentucky artists in its gallery, as well as free performances that range from classical music to jazz and from ballet to modern dance. The four-story building contains studios, a rehearsal and performance hall, and offices for numerous cultural groups; it is adjacent to the Lexington Opera House, where many of its organizations stage their presentations. The seasons of Lexington's performing arts groups generally run September through May; in summer, Shakespeare in the Park presents free outdoor performances.
Some of the groups housed at ArtsPlace are the Lexington Philharmonic, performing popular and classical concerts; Lexington Children's Theater, offering a full schedule of plays and dramatic workshops aimed at the younger set; the Lexington Ballet, which sponsors classic ballet performances and a dance school; and the Central Kentucky Youth Orchestra Society, Inc., which sponsors two orchestras for young musicians, as well as the Actors' Guild of Lexington. The Living Arts and Science Center, which is housed in the restored Kinkead House mansion, encourages artistic expression and learning. Cinema buffs view new and classic films at the newly renovated Italian Renaissance style Kentucky Theater.
Musical groups in Lexington include the Guitar Society of Lexington—Central Kentucky, a nonprofit arts organization that promotes and fosters awareness of the guitar as an instrument of classical music and sponsors several concerts annually; the University Artist Series, which annually sponsors a season of musical performances; and the Lexington Singers, a choral group of more than 120 singers who perform several holiday, pops, and classical concerts annually.
Lexington-area museums display a wide variety of art and artifacts. The Headley-Whitney Museum contains the unique artifacts and reflects the interests of Lexington artist George Headley. The museum consists of three buildings and features a shell grotto, a jewel room filled with miniatures fashioned from precious gems and metals, an Oriental gallery, an art library, and other changing exhibits. The Lexington Children's Museum provides interactive exhibits for children from one to twelve years old. Special galleries focus on the environment, human growth, local history, play, foreign travel, and science. At the University of Kentucky Art Museum, a collection of fourteenth-through twentieth-century European, American, African, and Pre-Columbian art is on display. Tracing the culture and development of Kentucky man from the Paleoindians to the Shawnee, the William S. Webb Museum of Anthropology at the University of Kentucky features textiles, kinship art, and religion. The American Saddle Horse Museum at the Kentucky Horse Park offers a multimedia theater presentation and a touch-screen interactive video photo file of world champion horses. The Aviation Museum of Kentucky features restored historic aircraft.
Notable buildings in Lexington include Loundon House, a unique castellated Gothic Villa that serves as the headquarters of the Lexington Art League, and the restored Senator John Pope House, one of the last remaining examples of the work of architect Benjamin Henry Latrobe, who designed the U.S. Capitol.
Seasonal events in Lexington include the LexArts weekend in February; a St. Patrick's Day parade in March; a Festival of the Bluegrass in June; a week-long July Fourth celebration; a Woodland Arts Fair in August; a Roots and Heritage Festival in September; and the Southern Lights Holiday Festival in November and December, which includes a downtown Christmas Parade. Downtown Lexington hosts an annual Mayfest that features more than 100 artists, traditional Maypole dances, strolling entertainment, and tours of historic Gratz Park, where the event takes place. There are dozens of horse shows around town and at the Kentucky Horse Park throughout the year, including the Kentucky Three-Day Event in April that is the only four-star event of its kind. Touchdown Downtown takes place before and after home UK football games, providing fans transportation to and from the stadium and encouraging shopping and dining downtown. Equestrian events abound in the Lexington area, highlighted by the Blue Grass Stakes Race in April; July's Junior League Horse Show, the nation's largest outdoor saddlebred show; and Summer Yearling Sales at Keeneland, also in July. Lexington's arts calendar includes such summertime events as Festival of the Blue Grass, Shakespeare Festival, and the Woodland Arts Fair.
In 2001, minor-league baseball returned to Lexington for the first time in 50 years when the Lexington Legends began play at state-of-the-art Applebee's Park. The $13.5 million ballpark seats 6,000 and features more than 20 luxury suites as well as two lawn areas where fans can picnic as they watch the game. The Lexington Horsemen play at UK's Rupp Arena and were 2004 champions of the United Indoor Football league. Of course, the University of Kentucky (UK) competes in a wide variety of Division I collegiate sports. The Wildcats basketball team plays at Rupp Arena and has won more NCAA championships than any program in history and is arguably, next to horse racing, the overriding sports passion in the Bluegrass State. The UK football team also plays in the top-tier Southeastern Conference; games are played at Commonwealth Stadium. Memorial Coliseum is the site of the University of Kentucky Lady Cats games and the Transylvania Pioneers play at McAlister Auditorium.
The real sports attraction in Lexington, however, involves its famous four-legged athletes. Thoroughbreds are the champions of the Bluegrass Country, and Lexington is considered the world's horse capital. Lexington's full calendar of equestrian events includes horse shows, dressage events, racing, polo, steeplechases, fox hunting, and horse sales.
The Keeneland Race Course is the scene of fine thorough-bred racing during April and October. The highlight of the spring meet is the Blue Grass Stakes, the last major race before the Kentucky Derby (held in Louisville but simulcast and celebrated wholeheartedly in Lexington). Horse sales are scheduled four times annually in a world-famous pavilion; facilities include a private clubhouse, a grandstand that accommodates 5,000 people, and stables for 1,200 horses. Transcontinental aircraft from Greece, the United Arab Emirates, and England berth at Bluegrass Field each year while their passengers participate in the Keeneland Summer Select Sales. The beautifully landscaped course was established in 1936 on Keene family property, which was part of a 1783 land grant from patriot Patrick Henry, a cousin of the family. Steeped in the gentile tradition of the Old South, the track even provides ladies with parasols when the sun is reflecting off the copper roof.
The Red Mile Harness Track, built in 1875, is the nation's oldest active harness course. It has the reputation of being the fastest track in the world because more world records have been set at this one-mile, red clay track than at any other. Racing meets are held here in the spring, summer, and fall, with the Kentucky Futurity, the final jewel in trotting's Triple Crown, held in October. The Junior League Horse Show, the nation's largest outdoor Saddlebred show, is held at the Red Mile in July of each year. The Lexington Polo Club holds matches from June through October at the Kentucky Horse Park, and the U.S. Open Polo Championship occurs in September.
The Lexington Area Sports Authority was established in 2002 to promote amateur sports in the area by bringing in, and supporting, quality amateur athletic events, including youth tournaments in a variety of sports and the unique Bluegrass State Games every summer.
Lexington sees its beautiful countryside as both an attraction and an enhancement to its way of life, and the city has long sought to protect and preserve green space. More than 100 parks comprising four thousand acres serve citizens and visitors with a variety of services, facilities, and programs, including ballfields, summer playground programs, cultural activities, fitness trails, golf courses, swimming pools, and city-wide special events and contests. Special parks include McConnell Springs, a 26-acre natural pocket within an industrial area; Shillito Park, which contains softball, baseball, soccer, and football fields, tennis courts, a fitness trail with 18 exercise stations, and picnic shelters; Jacobson Park, which features a lake stocked with fish for anglers, a marina with pedalboats, a nature center, and an amphitheater; Masterson Station Park, the site of unique, comprehensive equestrian programs including clinics, lectures, and horseback riding lessons; and Raven Run Nature Sanctuary, which contains rare wildflowers, hiking trails, and picnicking facilities in a beautiful, informal setting.
Lexington's moderate climate offers plenty of incentive and opportunities for outdoor recreation, and when the temperatures dip low enough, residents can be found cross-country skiing, sledding, or ice skating in the parks and surrounding countryside. Lexington Ice Center and Sports Complex is open year-round for day and night sessions of skating lessons and hockey games. Lexington's milder climate and natural beauty makes golf an option throughout all but the coldest months. Fifteen public and semi-private courses are available to golfers, including such Pete Dye-designed layouts as Kearney Hill and Peninsula, as well as Picadome, Connemara, and High Point.
Lexington has more than a dozen major shopping centers, including modern indoor malls that feature both large department stores and smaller specialty shops. Turfland Mall has department stores and retail shops, and Fayette Mall is the second-largest mall in Kentucky with more than 120 stores. The Shops at Lexington Center is convenient to downtown and the convention center. The city also offers plenty of boutique and specialty shopping areas. Clay Avenue Shops are a collection of stores in a former turn-of-the-century residential neighborhood. Victorian Square and Dudley Square are historic, renovated areas in the downtown with restaurants, fashions and Kentucky/Appalachian handicrafts. Chevy Chase Village is a thriving and eclectic mix of shops near the University. The Kentucky Store on Victorian Square has Kentucky souvenirs. Festival Market is a specialty food, retail, and entertainment center adjacent to Victorian Square. Also downtown are the Civic Center Shops, featuring Berea College crafts. Lexington's Farmers' Market is held every Saturday on West Vine Street and each Tuesday and Thursday at Maxwell and South Broadway, featuring fruits and vegetables, herbs, flowers, jams and jellies, honey, Kentucky specialties and more. The J. Peter-man Company, based in Lexington, operates a store in the city. Lexington is legendary for antique hunters; as a writer for The New York Times put it, antiquing in the Bluegrass is "a chance to unearth some great buys in American antiques and, in the bargain, enjoy some of the most beautiful rural countryside anywhere." There are three antique malls within the city limits, and more than 200 shops in the surrounding area.
Cuisines from around the world can be had in Lexington in myriad restaurants that range from casual to fine dining. Mid-south regional food specialties found in Lexington include the Kentucky Hot Brown sandwich, Derby Pie, cat-fish, country ham, southern fried chicken, spoonbread, hushpuppies, and chess pie. Some of the more popular restaurants serving up Bluegrass Fare include Café Jennifer on Woodland Ave., any of the several Ramsey's Diner restaurants around town, deShea's in Victorian Square, or Horse & Barrel right next door. For fine dining patrons visit Jonathan at Gratz Park, Metropol on West Short Street, or Le Deauville in the Historic District, among others. Lygnah's Irish Pub near the University of Kentucky campus was commended for its burgers in Southern Living magazine. Alfalfa's in the bottom floor of the new Downtown Arts Center has vegetarian fare.
Visitor Information: Lexington Convention and Visitor's Bureau, 301 East Vine Street, Lexington, KY 40507-1513; telephone (859)233-7299 or (800)845-3959