Just got a question from @FoxysTVTime on YouTube asking about the history of the Kenwick neighborhood. You know, I drive through there pretty often but I've never really stopped to think about where it all came from.

Oh, Kenwick's got such a fascinating backstory. The neighborhood was founded on May eleventh, nineteen oh nine, but its history goes way back to seventeen ninety-seven when Henry Clay, the young Virginia lawyer, moved to Lexington and started buying up land for what became his Ashland estate. Clay named it Ashland for all the ash trees on the property, and it eventually grew to six hundred acres that included what's now Kenwick.

Wait, so Kenwick was literally part of Henry Clay's backyard?

Exactly! Local legend says a portion of Kenwick was actually Henry and Lucretia's apple orchard. You can still walk from your front porch in Kenwick to the grounds where a three-time presidential candidate and Secretary of State tended his orchards. Around eighteen thirty-seven, the Clays sold that area and it became part of the Ellerslie Estate for nearly a century.

So when did it actually become a neighborhood?

The heirs of the Ellerslie Estate divided it into residential lots, and on May eleventh, nineteen oh nine, Kenwick was officially established. Within a few decades, the farmland was replaced by some of Lexington's earliest suburbs. What's really cool is Kenwick's defining feature became the Craftsman bungalow with those wide front porches, low-pitched rooflines, and tapered columns that give it such distinctive character.

And it's still going strong today?

Oh absolutely. Starting in the nineteen eighties, it attracted an eclectic mix of young professionals and U-K employees drawn by the proximity to campus and downtown, plus relatively affordable housing. As one resident put it, Kenwick "runs from the million dollar homes on Richmond Road to the train tracks in three blocks". It's that perfect blend of history and community right in the heart of Lexington.

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