Lexington, KY

Lexington is the Horse Capital of the World, and the title is measurable: the rolling Bluegrass around the city, its limestone water building strong bones, carries several hundred thoroughbred farms whose white and black plank fences run for hundreds of kilometres — a landscape as manicured as any garden in Europe. At Keeneland, the loveliest racecourse in America, racing and the world's premier thoroughbred auctions proceed under old trees; the Kentucky Horse Park honours the champions themselves.

The city beneath the horse country was once called the "Athens of the West": Transylvania University, founded in 1780, was the first college west of the Alleghenies, and the young Mary Todd — later Mrs. Lincoln — grew up in a house on Main Street that now tells her story. The University of Kentucky anchors the modern city, and its Otis A. Singletary Center for the Arts — the concert hall documented in this archive — serves as Lexington's principal classical stage, home to the university's School of Music seasons and to the Lexington Philharmonic, and host to the touring orchestras and opera companies that reach central Kentucky. With bourbon distilleries ringing the city and burgoo simmering on race days, Lexington offers America's most complete marriage of turf, thoroughbred and tune.