Website Search
Stories of Lexington's history told through the Kentucky Room archives.
Throughout June, join us as we celebrate Pride Month with programs, books, podcasts, and more.
Find out what's happening at our locations. Browse upcoming events and discover our dedicated learning spaces. Reserve a meeting room. Explore our galleries and special collections.
Read articles from magazines and journals, learn a new language, or locate a newspaper article. These resources can't be found with a search engine but are available for free with your library card.
Join us for a walking tour of Downtown Lexington’s historic sites. The full tour is available as a single MP3, or you can download individual tracks. For the single MP3, music will play between the stops. You can pause the track while you walk between stops.
This tour covers a walking distance of 1.1 miles.
The music clips used in this tour are from “Walking Barefoot on Grass” by Kai Engel, and are used with a CCBY license. It is available here: http://freemusicarchive.org/music/Kai_Engel/
Join us for a walking tour of Downtown Lexington’s historic sites. The full tour is available as a single MP3, or you can download individual tracks. For the single MP3, music will play between the stops.
Old Kentucky Architecture is a comprehensive book by Rexford Newcomb that was published in 1940.
The Morton School Number 1, Lexington’s first public city school in 1834, was originally built on the corner of Walnut (later Martin Luther King Dr.) and Short Street.
Fayette County's local businesses and organizations contain a wealth of information about local residents.
Fayette County's buildings contain a great deal of history about the region and its inhabitants.
The Council of Defense books contain records for Fayette County’s Army soldiers, Navy sailors, Marines, and Army nurses in World War I, and include information regarding the person’s residence, birth place and date, specific units and en
Illustrated Lexington Kentucky contains photographs, demographics, commerce and financial information about Lexington up to 1919.
Old Homes of the Blue Grass is a photographic review of historic homes in Kentucky’s Blue Grass region.
The Kentucky Progress Commission was formed in 1928 in order to draw tourism and business to Kentucky. It was formed by the Kentucky Legislature, and was a 12 person board.
The Kentucky Rally Songs pamphlet contains 42 songs compiled and printed by the state chapter of the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union, to be used at the many gatherings and rallies that they organized in the late 19th and ea
The Knowles Postcard Collection contains images of notable Kentucky locations, such as Ashland, Keeneland, and Mammoth Cave, as well as county courthouses, farms, schools, and many others.
The Kentucky Room's collections contain Lexington's residential directories going back over 200 years, and are some of the most useful resources for researchers looking for family information, neighborhood histories, and house histories.
In 1917, the Woman’s Club of Central Kentucky hosted a series of speakers giving historical sketches on people and places of local interest.
The Kentucky Postcard collection contains images of well-known sites in Central Kentucky, such as Keeneland, Transylvania University, Ashland, and many others.
The Kentucky Chautauqua Assembly presented an annual event in Lexington’s Woodland Park with days of programming. Presentations varied from live music and entertainment to lectures and speeches from national figures.
The Lexington History Museum began in 1999, and opened its doors in the Old Courthouse in 2003. Its purpose is to educate Fayette County about its rich history, and preserve pieces of that history for future generations.
