The East End:
A Living Archive

East End landmark · 01

The Lyric Theatre

The Lyric’s glowing marquee announced more than entertainment—it marked a place where Black Lexington could gather, create, celebrate, and be seen.

The theatre opened in December 1948 while segregation restricted where African Americans could attend movies and performances. From its corner in the East End, the Lyric presented films, music, pageants, civic programs, and touring performers, becoming part of the neighborhood’s everyday social and cultural rhythm.

After the Lyric closed in 1963, community memory and persistent preservation work kept its importance alive. The restored theatre reopened in 2010 as the Lyric Theatre and Cultural Arts Center, returning performance, visual art, education, and public gathering to this historic corner.

• The Chitlin’ Circuit: A Living Legacy

East End landmark · 02

Deweese Street

For generations, Deweese Street functioned as one of the most important public stages of Black life in Lexington.

The district grew during an era when segregation and redlining restricted where Black Lexingtonians could live, shop, work, and obtain services. Within those constraints, residents built a dense network of enterprises and institutions that served the East End and the wider African American community.

The historical record identifies businesses and gathering places including Derby Sandwich Shop, Domestic Life and Accident Insurance, Club Hurricane, barbershops, restaurants, medical offices, and the Lyric Theatre. Together, they made Deweese a place where commerce, culture, professional life, and social connection met.

East End landmark · 03

Charles Young Center

The Charles Young Center turned a segregated public landscape into an enduring place for recreation, learning, service, and neighborhood belonging.

The city acquired the park site in 1930, and the community center opened during the 1930s with public-works support. At a time when Black residents were excluded from many public facilities, the center supplied badly needed indoor recreation and meeting space in the East End.

Named in honor of Colonel Charles Young, the pioneering Black military officer and diplomat, the center has continued to host youth, adult, senior, educational, and community programs. Its listing in the National Register of Historic Places recognizes both its architecture and its importance to African American civic life.

• Charles Young Park and Community Center National Register nomination
• Charles Young Park and Community Center

East End landmark · 04

William Wells Brown Elementary

William Wells Brown Elementary links the East End’s future to the name of a Lexington-born abolitionist, author, lecturer, and advocate for freedom.

The school opened in 2008 after the closing of Johnson and Russell elementary schools. Fayette County Public Schools and the city developed the campus as more than a conventional school, pairing classrooms with community-oriented facilities and programming intended to support children and families.

Its namesake, William Wells Brown, was born into slavery near Lexington and became an internationally known abolitionist and writer. Carrying his name places a history of literacy, self-determination, and freedom within the daily lives of new generations of East End students.

• William Wells Brown Elementary School

East End landmark · 05

Shiloh Baptist Church

Shiloh Baptist Church carries forward a tradition in which worship, mutual support, leadership, and neighborhood life have long been inseparable.

Shiloh’s congregational roots reach to the late nineteenth century and connect with Lexington’s older Black Baptist community. The church’s history reflects the way congregations created spiritual homes while also sustaining networks of care, education, fellowship, and public leadership.

In 1963, Shiloh acquired the former Felix Memorial Baptist building on East Fifth Street. Completed in 1923, the monumental yellow-brick church is distinguished by its classical composition and arched windows; Shiloh’s stewardship gave the landmark a continuing life within the East End.

• Our History
• Historic Shiloh Baptist Church, Lexington, Kentucky

East End landmark · 06

Greater Liberty Baptist Church

Greater Liberty Baptist Church represents the continuity of Black congregational life within a building whose neighborhood story began in the nineteenth century.

Greater Liberty belongs to the lineage of Black Baptist congregations that grew from Lexington’s historic Main Street Baptist community. That congregational story is related to, but distinct from, the earlier history of the building it would eventually occupy.

The Chestnut Street property began as a Christian mission and worship site in the late nineteenth century. A Baptist congregation acquired the building in 1925, and Greater Liberty has continued its role as a place for worship, fellowship, service, and neighborhood memory.

• Greater Liberty Baptist Church, Lexington, Kentucky

East End landmark · 07

Palmer Pharmacy

At Palmer Pharmacy, health care, entrepreneurship, representation, and everyday neighborhood life came together under one roof.

After arriving in Lexington in 1951, pharmacist Zirl A. Palmer opened his first store at Fifth and Race. In 1961 he opened a two-story complex at Fifth and Chestnut that combined a pharmacy and luncheonette with offices for physicians and a lawyer. It became the first Black-owned Rexall pharmacy franchise in the United States.

Palmer offered far more than prescriptions: the store’s soda fountain provided a welcoming gathering place, customers could pay utility bills there, and popular calendars reflected Lexington’s Black community. A later West End pharmacy—not this East End building—was bombed in 1968. The preserved East End property now serves the neighborhood again as a WayPoint center.

• The City of Lexington and a Nonprofit Are Saving This Historic Black Pharmacy
• A New Center Opens at Historic Palmer Pharmacy

East End landmark · 08

Bluegrass–Aspendale

Bluegrass–Aspendale must be remembered as both a housing policy story and a lived neighborhood shaped by families, relationships, resilience, and loss.

Lexington’s first 286 public-housing units opened in 1937 as two racially segregated developments: Aspendale for Black residents and Bluegrass for white residents, divided by a barbed-wire barrier. The development was later integrated and eventually expanded to 963 units, becoming home to generations of Lexington families.

Redevelopment under the federal HOPE VI program brought partial demolition in November 2002 and final demolition in October 2006, followed by new mixed-income housing. Official accounts emphasize replacement and investment; a complete history must also acknowledge residents’ community ties, the disruption of relocation, and the memories attached to the former neighborhood.

• Urban Renewal: The East End
• Black People in Lexington oral histories