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| View from yard on Goodrich Ave. in Lexington, KY, ca. 1935 (KDL) |
As a history buff, some of the best moments are when you see an image that takes a familiar place back in time. I found this picture in the Kentuckiana Digital Archive a while back. It’s a picture that was used to advertise a house that was for sale on Goodrich Avenue in Lexington. It’s dated June of 1935. And my home happens to be on Goodrich.
Several years ago I saw an old map of Lexington that showed Goodrich Avenue as the southernmost street in Lexington. Goodrich is in a little neighborhood called WGPL, just north of Southland Avenue off Nicholasville Road.
In this map, Southland Avenue didn’t exist, and beyond Goodrich, Nicholasville Pike turned into a country road that meandered its way south to Jessamine County. The picture above gives us a glimpse of what that must have been like.
What you see here is the backyard of the home, facing south, with the area that would become Southland stretching out beyond. As I understand it, Southland was developed in the ’50s. This area would roughly be about where the Southland Collins Bowling alley is today. Wolf Run, which begins in this area and is now underground, flows around the property line, and farmland stretches out to the south.
Pretty awesome little glimpse of the past.