Cheapside may be renamed Henry Tandy Centennial Park

LEXINGTON, Ky. (WTVQ) – The city Commission of Lexington’s Parks and Recreation voted unanimously this week, at the behest of Take Back Cheapside, to support changing the
name of Cheapside Park to Henry Tandy Centennial Park.

Now, with the vote from the Commission, the name change will now forward to be heard by the Urban County Council at its meeting in August.

If approved, Henry A. Tandy Centennial Park will join nine existing Lexington parks named after prominent African Americans: George Washington Carver, Charles Young, Frederick Douglass, Paul L. Dunbar, Isaac Murphy, Lou Johnson, Martin Luther King, Jr., Whitney Young and William Wells Brown.

“Over the past several years, positive changes have occurred around our Historic Courthouse,” Lexington Mayor Linda Gorton said. “Renaming Cheapside Park in honor of one of Lexington’s most remarkable, successful black entrepreneurs is important considering the history that has occurred in this space. The renaming of Cheapside Park helps bridge our past, present and future … we are looking ahead to a brighter future for Lexington over the next 100 years.”

“This is just a first step towards illuminating some other Lexingtonians because we talk about the pain a lot and it’s necessary, but we also need to talk about the successes as well,” said Russell Allen, co-founder of Take Back Cheapside.

Cheapside Park is a block in downtown Lexington, Kentucky between Upper Street and Mill Street. Cheapside is a common English name meaning “market place” from Old English ceapan, “to buy.”

Cheapside was the Lexington’s main marketplace in the 19th century and included
a slave market before the Civil War.

In addition to being one of the largest slave markets in the South, Cheapside was also host to the sale of “fancy girls,” young women of mixed race sold as sex slaves.

“Over the years the public square in Lexington served as a gathering place for numerous public events, happy celebrations and also sad events including, prior to 1863, the buying and selling of slaves,” Gorton noted.

For the past few months, the City has been communicating with organizers of Take Back Cheapside. The citizen group helped lead the effort to have controversial statues removed from Cheapside Park in 2018. Additionally, a historical marker, produced through the efforts of the Lexington Alumni Chapter of the Kappa Alpha Psi Fraternity, has been restored and returned to the public square. The marker describes the history of slavery in Fayette County and the Cheapside slave auction block.

“We know that the renaming of the space will not change the atrocities that happened in Cheapside or make it an inclusive place,” said Take Back Cheapside co-founder DeBraun Thomas. “It is however a much needed step for the true healing and reconciliation that our community needs. Mr. Tandy’s legacy is tied directly to the bricks laid in the Old Courthouse and the road he paved for the success of others.”

“It’s been important to have these conversations with DeBraun Thomas and Russell Allen,” Gorton said. “Their vision and leadership to transition this space to one that recognizes our past and looks toward our future is amazing. The partnership with Take Back Cheapside has produced big changes to this public space and will continue in the future.”

Up until 2017, statutes of John Hunt Morgan and John C. Breckinridge Memorial, were prominent features of Cheapside park that commemorated the Confederate States Army who fought against the United States forces in order to uphold white supremacy and the institution of slavery in the Southern states.

Even though, the Kentucky General Assembly attempted to ban or at least cripple the slave trade in 1833 with the Non-Importation Act, which banned the importation of slaves into The Commonwealth for the purpose of selling them; the state government of Kentucky funded Breckinridge’s memorial in 1887 and John Morgan’s monument in 1911 (after the slave trade was outlawed in 1864).

Cheapside market continued until 1922 when it was declared a public nuisance and banned.

During the last three years, the city of Lexington, encouraged by its citizens and Take Back Cheapside, began the process of understanding how racialized practices of its past were accumulated and incorporated into this century and affecting the daily lives of its residents.

Using Take Back Cheapside’s three-point plan, the goal is not only to educate and alleviate the daily reminder of violence against black lives, but to uplift the positive contributions black individuals have made to this community.

After the monuments were relocated in 2017, step 2 of the plan was completed in 2018 when Kappa Alpha Psi Fraternity commissioned a historical maker on Short and Upper Street to teach the history of our city’s downtown square as a slave auction block.

Take Back Cheapside will now work collectively with city officials and community partners to complete the initial phase of step 3 to rename Cheapside to Henry A. Tandy Centennial Park.

Henry A. Tandy was born into slavery in Estill County, Kentucky in 1853. In 1865, Tandy moved to Lexington at the age of 15 and by 1867 he was working for one of the city’s largest building contractors.

In 1898, he, along with his partner Albert Byrd, laid the bricks of the historic 1899 Old Courthouse; at the time one of the largest courthouses in the United States. According to Tandy, more than 1.5 million bricks were laid to build the load-bearing brickwork of the courthouse.

He was admired for his leadership roles in the community and was a founding member and trustee of the Seventh Day Adventist Church in Lexington.

The bricks laid by Tandy in 1898 remain the foundation of the Old Courthouse, even after its renovation in 2018.

He and his wife, Emma Brice Tandy, lived a few blocks from the park at 190 (Now 642) W. Main Street, which also still stands today.

Included in Tandy’s work is Miller Hall on University of Kentucky’s campus completed in 1898.

At the turn of the century, Tandy was considered to be the richest Black man in Kentucky.

He bought his first plot of land from William Kinkead in the East End and was featured in the Isaac Scott Hathaway Museum, formerly in the Lexington History Museum and the Robert H. Williams Cultural Center, this museum was “dedicated to establishing a public facility to highlight individual biographies and display artifacts, art and written work” of “distinguished African-American artists, writers and others contributing to the community.”

His son, Vertner Woodson Tandy, became the first licensed Black architect in New York (built Madam CJ Walker’s home) and was one of the founders of the Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity, the first and one of the largest historically African American intercollegiate Greek-lettered fraternities in the world.

Tandy died in Lexington in 1918 and was buried in Greenwood Cemetery in Lexington/Cove Haven Cemetery, one of only two African American cemeteries in Lexington, on 984 Whitney Ave.

Tandy’s legacy is tied to the Courthouse and park on which it sits.

TAKE BACK CHEAPSIDE is a coalition of citizens from Lexington, Kentucky committed to uniting the city’s official history with the memories of all its people.