Lexitecture Patterns: Main Street

By using architectural patterns, we can put history to work in new buildings while being true to our own time period. If we use patterns that we already find in Lexington, we can create a stronger sense of place in Lexington, while doing something old and new at the same time.

The next Lexington pattern that we’ll study is the Main Street pattern.

By building directly on the street and stretching back narrowly, this pattern efficiently allows for many buildings to have storefronts on the street while maximizing the buildings’ footprint, giving you more space to use. Because there is less distance between front doors, it makes it easy for people to walk up and down the street to shop, and it can be on the back side as well. Simply put, organizing with this density increases walkability.

The awnings and windows create a business type of a front porch, a place that is neither public nor private, that allows the pedestrian to window shop and decide whether or not to take a deeper look. This visibility, coupled with accessibility, ensures these businesses’ success. The problem in our case has been accessibility; there is not much parking, and most people can’t walk or bike downtown easily like they could in the old days.

If you look closely, you’ll notice that most of the buildings share a wall, and become connected buildings. This fire-rated wall is called a party wall. The party wall is the key to this pattern and the key to creating a better density. Today, our zoning regulations and setbacks literally make it illegal to build with party walls, and discourage building on the street.  We couldn’t build Main Street again, even if we wanted to. This needs to change so that we can begin reestablishing downtown Lexington as a destination.

Instead of main streets, Lexington has been building strip malls in the recent past. The strip mall pattern works against the Main Street pattern; it uses land inefficiently, it spreads everything out, and it forces you to drive there. I bet that most people would drive from Target to Best Buy if shopping in both stores. I doubt anyone would drive from Main Street Cafe to Craig Reagin Clothiers. Again, density increases walkability.

I propose that we start by building a new street downtown, for pedestrians, parallel to Church Street, that follows the Main Street pattern. This could create our desperately needed density, and if top floors were residential, people could live and work downtown. 

Let's fill Main Street with life again.