Minutes for Wednesday, January 27

People in attendance:
Danny Mayer from North of Center
Archie
Sarah and Charlie
Marty, North Limestone Neighborhood Association president and candidate for the 1st district council
Visiting speaker, Rick Scein

Discussion and Blog Questions:
Schein writes/teaches at U.K. about race and landscape
Language-know your audience, speak for them and not at them, speak in a way appropriate for them
-Spoke about Courthouse Square and how it’s changing/changed since Schein wrote his essay
-The essay was about how to look at a city
-A reflection on the structural imperatives of the city—a privilege of being an academic/professor
-We want to consider change, how it occurs, what does not change, and other factors in the structure of the city
-Belonging: Attempts by people to take back their city
-Historic preservation to stave off urban development-Some of Lexington’s African American community have used this to save certain parts of town
-The structure of the city can best be observed through walks through historical parts of town

Racial Formation and Symbolic Landscapes—Schein’s book on racialized landscape:
-Purpose: to connect the contemporary city to conversations we are currently having to deal with modern racism
-To discover a landscape history:
-Ask questions about the landscape
-What does the landscape mean? How is it part of our identity?
-How does the landscape work as a facilitator/mediator to the conversation?
-How do landscapes work?
-1860: Woodford County predominantly an African American county
-Monuments to the “lost cause” of the confederacy in Lexington
-Hunt-Morgan and Breckinridge
-Breckinridge statue, near an impoverished part of town, has its own trust fund
-Iconography/symbolism on the Ky state quarter:
-The Steven Foster plantation house “My Old Kentucky Home”
-References to slave songs
-Glorified thoroughbred “cashcrop”
-Publicly subsidized renovations to the Henry Clay estate: “Servants” instead of slaves
-Controversy about slavery in museums
-when something is named in a museum, it is considered a historical thing, no longer a problem
-Hampton Court Gate, constructed 1907, a current “flashpoint”
-Controversy about locking the gate in the late 80’s/early 90’s
-some wanted to eliminate public access from the North End (Smithtown, a poor African American street on the other side of the gate)
-Other community members opposed locking the gate
-Locking the gate symbolic of a community that did not welcome poor African Americans in their rich, white neighborhood
-Evidence behind Schein’s claims: conversations with community members, historical maps and documents, walking tours, etc.

Background of Lexington: Current population, about ¼ million
-Entry point to the frontier
-Agricultural market area
-Eclipsed by Louisville and Cincinnati (because of their river access)
-Became a processing industry, refining products
-“Athens of the West”
-Divided city: White/Black and rich/poor dynamic—often rich white and poor black divisions
-Small but wealthy city because it did not industrialize as quickly as the rest of the world
-A northern industrial elite consume the Lex agri-market and horse industry—further gentrification of the city. This elite shapes the landscape of the city

City Layout:
-99% of cities laid out in grid format
-5 acre out lots (residential)
-1/2 acre in lots (commercial)
-Creates a pattern of semi-agricultural resident structures
-Slave quarters, gardens, smokehouses, etc.
-Freed slaves living in the city, scattered throughout
-Urban Morphology: the shape of the city and how it changes and grows
-5 acre lots sold off and divided
-Lex continues to develop slowly
-Miller Alley: Behind the big houses on the main streets, smaller houses (no longer there) emerge in back alleys
-Slaves (allowed to “live out) and poor African Americans sometimes rented these smaller houses to live closer to their jobs
-Whites in front in big houses, slaves/poor/black in back in small houses
-A function and gendered division of labor emerged from these arrangements
-1870: freed slaves continue to move to these small alleys, now called “towns”
-Alley’s begin to ring the city as it continues to slowly expand
-50% of Lex