Today, I walked through the Stonewall neighborhood near Clay’s Mill and Man O’ War.  This area is officially referred to as Higby Woods, though signage in the neighborhood is the new variety that identifies the neighborhood with a badge.   The area seems to have been built in the late 1970’s, but the housing has aged well and I think this neighborhood does a pretty good job of exemplifying a certain architectural quality that late 20th/early 21st century houses in Lexington have that I haven’t seen in other places I’ve lived.  In this case, it’s predominantly Colonial Revival, but one house has an upfit to a Scandinavian-modern look.

One feature of these homes is large lot size.  Many of these lots were well-equipped, with pools, playgrounds, patios and basketball courts. (The nearby park, meanwhile, had none of these.) I though about the trade off between lots of big yards versus a nice park. With a park, you share cost with your neighbors (or, really, with the rest of the city). And that’s fine as long as you all basically agree on what you want from the park (or whether you want them at all).

But, as the city grows, it’s easy to feel as if you voice is lost in the crowd. If you can afford it, a nice yard can serve as a hedge against your neighbors having different priorities, though it comes at some cost, and in the case of this area, this is evident in the maintenance of many formerly well-installed basketball hoops.

The good: well-cared for neighborhood

The bad: …with more than it’s share of tagging!