Day 86 brought me back to Rookwood, which I’ve visited twice before, on Day 45 and Day 7. Today’s walk was similar in a lot of ways to the one on Day 45, including the converted garages. Today’s walk did pass near an original house in the neighborhood, apparently much older than the 1950’s-vintage houses around it–its always neat to come across these houses.
A couple of things struck me today. The first was that the streets here are over-engineered, with posted speed limits of 35mph that are probably faster than they need to be for starters, but which may well be exceeded regularly because the street “feels” faster than 35mph–there aren’t a lot of psychological barriers to going faster. The streets feel wide, and they are wide at 36 feet. Few parked cars and few streets in the treelawn area contribute to the wide-open feeling here. The speed at which cars are traveling and lack of barriers doesn’t just make these streets feel (incrementally) less safe to walk along, it also makes parking on the street feel kind of risky.
An original house in the Rookwood neighborhood
The second thing I noticed is that there were relatively few signs of young kids in this neighborhood. There may be good reasons for this and of course subjective observations are susceptible to all sorts of errors, but it seems worth mentioning, especially in light of the traffic speed observations.
Today I took another trip out along Bryan Station and walked through several smaller subdivisions. The big surprise here was the variety of housing ages (and sizes) that I encountered over a fairly short stretch with houses from the 1950’s and 60’s next to a subdivision with lots that have not yet been built.
There is a lesson here about growth patterns and maybe about entropy. This newest subdivision appears to have been cut off a neighboring parcel belonging to a church. In a lot of ways, this reminded me of the Pinehurst area from Day 16, and oddly enough, this neighborhood is listed under the same “neighborhood” name by the assessor’s office. The other Pinehurst is close but it’s not obviously connected and my belief at the time I walked it was that it was cut off a privately-owned property (so perhaps using the same name is a simple convention for the assessor?) But there are similarities, in that both appear to have been divided off larger properties, not exactly as infill but almost having the affect of a small infill project. Anyway, I think this area’s strength is in the range of housing ages, something made possible by this subdivision of larger parcels.
Subdivision of property is interesting though. It’s never as easy to assemble pieces back together as it is to subdivide. It usually takes concerted effort. It reminds me of watching oil in a pot of boiling water while it separates and then recombines. And so, I would say that watching the development patterns of Lexington is sort of like watching that oil. (This is true of any city, really, but particularly Lexington because of the value of the agricultural lands surrounding it.) Larger parcels get broken down and sometimes these are broken immediately into small pieces like house lots. Other times they are medium-size parcels, an agricultural reserve, a church, maybe a house with acreage. These midsized lots can be broken down further and often, eventually, they are. And this is sort of fascinating. Looking at the map of this area, there are places where this sort of thing could easily happen again.
Among all of this, I found among a couple of my snapshots a couple of photos of similar scenes in different subdivisions. I think seeing these two photos side by side is a nice way to show the impact of setbacks on the “feel” of a street.
View of a street in Northwood constructed in the 1950’s
The first photo is from the Northwood neighborhood. Here the houses are mostly 1 or 1-1/2 floors. Houses are set relatively close to the sidewalk. The street feels cozy.
View of a street in Kenawood constructed in the 1960’s.
The second photo is from the Kenawood neighborhood, just across Bryan Station. This area was built only a little later, in the early 1960’s. Houses are ranch style houses, so they are probably close in size, but they are set back further from the street. This street feels more open. The difference is subtle and other elements, like street-parked cars and trees, have an impact as well.
A final though. I took advantage of this walk today to walk through the area I first wrote about on Day 5. One of the questions I had at that time was whether my expectations about political leanings would be borne out by the yard signs that would inevitably appear. As it turns out, sort of. That neighborhood seems to be pretty evenly mixed, befitting of the mixed signals I was getting then!
Today I returned to the Rookwood area that I first visited on Day 7 although this area appears to be slightly newer, with ranch and “two-story” ranch houses from the late 1960’s. This section also feels perhaps a bit more stable. Though the houses are modest, the yards are large and all in all, both homes and yards feel well cared for. While in some neighborhoods this age, you might see crumbling concrete and asphalt or siding in need of painting, there is none of that here and some places have had nice exterior upgrades.
Converted garage in the Rookwood neighborhood
One feature of houses of this vintage tickles me. These houses date from the early part of the attached garage era. Some houses have them and some don’t. It always seems that at least a few homes from this period have attached garages that have been converted into living space, often resulting in a driveway that leads right up to, say, a bay window. At any rate, this area is no exception, and there were two or three converted garages.
This area also features what at a glance appears to be a park, located on the southern corner near New Circle Road. Property records show that this area has been subdivided but list the owner as the city/county government. Behind this is dense vegetation, apparently right-of-way for power lines, possibly with some drainage function interrelated to the overgrown culverts I saw on the other side in July.
What works: Something is keeping this neighborhood stable.
What doesn’t: These streets are tantalizingly close to connecting to nearby Kenawood park. Proximity to parks is good or bad depending on who you ask, but I wish they’d been designed with the extra connection.
Today’s walk was through an earlier post-war neighborhood. This is tract housing to be sure, but there seems to be some character, perhaps some different housing styles, or just character from its age. It was possible to imagine this kind of neighborhood in the 50’s and 60’s, with tanned crew-cut boys playing in the yards, and it probably really doesn’t look too much different today. The Rookwood neighborhood seems to be the southern part of this area, dominated by duplexes and somewhat newer (and introduced by a pair of pillars at its entrance.) So Kenawood presumably makes up the rest of it, which (in these blocks at least) consists of construction from the mid-1960’s. There were some notable aspects. First, the lack of street trees is amazing, and makes a big difference in the feel of the neighborhood. Second, it feels somewhat as if infrastructure presented some unusual difficulties. Powerlines run through the middle of the neighborhood creating a gap-tooth appearance along some streets.
The sidewalk disappears at a bridge over a stream
Meanwhile, a storm water ditch runs above ground in places, then runs under streets, including one cul-de-sac. Another oddity; the end of Hisle is a very long way from the nearest arterial (a full 1.8 miles from Eastland and New Circle Road), yet is virtually next to property along New Circle Road.
This residential street nearly connects with the industrial one behind the fence
It doesn’t seem out of the question that roads could eventually connect and shorten that distance considerably; from Hisle and Kilkenny, one can look right down industrial Sunshine Lane and into the Green’s Toyota property. Currently, the way is blocked with barbed wire; the short walk presumably requires trespassing.
Day 86 brought me back to Rookwood, which I’ve visited twice before, on Day 45 and Day 7. Today’s walk was similar in a lot of ways to the one on Day 45, including the converted garages. Today’s walk did pass near an original house in the neighborhood, apparently much older than the 1950’s-vintage houses around it–its always neat to come across these houses.
