Cheapside Park

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Cheapside Park was a block in downtown Lexington, Kentucky, between Upper Street and Mill Street. In the 1800s it was the city’s main marketplace, once called Public Square.

Before the Civil War, Cheapside housed a large slave market. Enslaved people were bought and sold there, with many sent to the Deep South or kept to work locally. The market brought together local traders, slaveholders, and buyers, and it also sold “fancy girls,” young mixed‑race women sold as sex slaves. The trade moved people to more profitable markets, helping the slave economy grow. An example shows traders buying 13 slaves for about $5,300 and selling them for about $8,700, a substantial profit.

Kentucky tried to limit slavery in 1833 with the Non‑Importation Act, and slavery ended in the United States with the 13th Amendment in 1865. The Cheapside market operated until 1922, when it was banned as a public nuisance.

Abraham Lincoln’s family had ties to Cheapside: in 1846, his future wife Mary Todd Lincoln’s father bought five slaves there, and Lincoln may have attended the auction. The name Cheapside comes from Old English for “marketplace.”

In 2020, Lexington renamed the area Henry A. Tandy Centennial Park because of its troubling history. The change followed a 2017 effort to address Confederate memorials. Today the site hosts the Lexington Farmers Market and events like Thursday Night Live.

Nearby Pope Villa, begun in 1811 and designed by Benjamin Latrobe, is another historic spot tied to this era and is now managed for tours by the Bluegrass Trust.