The Best Neighborhoods in Lexington, KY: A Local's Guide
Updated October 2026
I have lived in Lexington for 26 years, the last eleven out in Masterson Station on the northwest side, and my sister and her family are over in Hamburg, so I spend a fair amount of time crossing town. This page is the comparison I wish someone had handed me: the twelve neighborhoods I have written full guides for, lined up on the facts you can actually check rather than the adjectives everybody uses.
Start with the table. It puts part of town, home age, the prices each guide states, a measured walk to dinner, the measured drive to downtown, trash day and council district side by side in one place. Then read the groups underneath, which sort the twelve by what kind of place they are, and follow the link into whichever full guide you want the detail on. If your question is really whether to move to Lexington at all rather than where to land, the moving to Lexington guide is the better starting point.
Lexington neighborhoods compared
| Neighborhood | Part of town | Zip | Homes mostly built | Recent prices | Walk to dinner? | Miles to downtown | Trash day | Council district |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Downtown Lexington | Central | 40507 and 40508 | - | about $687K median, one Sept. sale | Yes | about 0.5 mi | Varies by street | 1, 3, and 5 |
| Bell Court | Southeast | 40508 | Around 1900 | see guide | Yes, just outside | about 1 mi | Tuesday | 3 |
| Ashland Park | Southeast | 40502 | 1919-about 1930 | $192K to $1.2M, four sales | Yes, just outside | about 1.25 mi | Tuesday for most | 5 |
| Chevy Chase | Southeast | 40502 | 1920-1960 | about $732K median, few sales | Yes | about 2 mi | Monday or Friday, by block | 3 and 5 |
| Idle Hour | Southeast | 40502 | 1950s-early 1960s | about $270K median, few sales | Yes | about 3 mi | Tuesday | 5 |
| Lansdowne | South | 40502 | mid-1950s-1970s | see guide | Yes | about 3.5 mi | Monday | 3 |
| Southland | South | 40503 | - | see guide | Yes | about 3.5 mi | Monday | 10 |
| Beaumont | Southwest | 40513 and 40504 | 1990s-2000s | about $390K to $890K | Yes | about 4.5 mi | Thursday | 10 |
| Masterson Station | Northwest | 40511 | Mid-1990s onward | about $300K to mid-$400Ks | Yes, just outside | about 5 mi | Thursday | 2 |
| Hamburg | Southeast | 40509 | - | about $475K median listing (ZIP) | Yes, just outside | about 5.5 mi | Varies by block | Varies |
| Palomar | Southwest | 40513 | 1986-mid-1990s | about $430K to $725K, houses | Yes, just outside | about 5.5 mi | Thursday | 9 |
| Andover | Southeast | 40509 | late 1980s-1990s | about $622K and $630K medians | Yes, just outside | about 6.5 mi | Varies by subdivision | 6 and 7 |
Where each column comes from, as of October 2026. Part of town is the direction from the courthouse block on North Limestone to the middle of each neighborhood's boundary, except Chevy Chase and Southland, which follow their guides. Zip codes are verified against two sources each and listed on the guides. Home age and prices are quoted from what each guide states, with “see guide” where a guide gives no figures and a dash where it does not say. Walk to dinner is the walking distance from the boundary to the nearest three restaurants in our restaurant data, Yes when all three are within half a mile, Some within a mile, No beyond, and “just outside” when they sit outside the boundary. Miles are a measured driving route to the courthouse block, rounded to the half mile, except Ashland Park, which uses its guide's own figure. Trash day and council district come from the city's collection areas and district boundaries, with Chevy Chase and Downtown checked by hand.
The twelve, grouped by what they are
Grouped by location and housing stock, which is what you are really choosing between.
Historic and walkable
Houses built from around 1900 to 1960, within about two miles of downtown by car, with at least three restaurants within half a mile on foot.
Chevy Chase
About a third of a square mile and about 1,100 addresses, tucked between Cooper Drive, Tates Creek Road, Fontaine Road and Chinoe Road, a short walk from the University of Kentucky campus. The homes were built from 1920 to 1960, more than half of them in the 1930s. The commercial strip people mean when they say Chevy Chase is the 800 block of Euclid Avenue, just outside the neighborhood's northern edge at High Street, with Charlie Brown's at 816 Euclid, the Chevy Chase Inn, open since 1933 and the oldest continuously operating bar in Lexington, and Bourbon n' Toulouse. Inside the neighborhood, Romany Road has its own small corridor anchored by A.P. Suggins. Henry Clay Simpson named the place in the 1920s after a Maryland golf club, on land that had been part of Henry Clay's Ashland estate. Prices are among the highest in the city.
Best for: walking to the Euclid Avenue strip just outside the neighborhood, houses from 1920 to 1960, a short walk to UK campus
Read the Chevy Chase guide →
Ashland Park
Planned from 1904 by the Olmsted Brothers, the Boston firm behind the grounds of the US Capitol and the Louisville park system, on Henry Clay's original 600-acre estate. Construction ran about 15 years and finished around 1930, across 188.9 acres of Colonial Revival, Craftsman and American Foursquare houses. Clay's Ashland estate still sits in the eastern part of the neighborhood at 120 Sycamore Road, its 17 acres a Level 1 arboretum since 2018 with more than 600 trees across 44 species. Catalpa Road is the street people photograph in the fall, for ginkgos that tend to drop their leaves within a day or two. Woodland Park is to the northwest, Clay's Spring Park to the southeast, and the Chevy Chase commercial corridor on Euclid Avenue is a short walk to the west.
Best for: Olmsted-planned streets, the Ashland estate arboretum, walking to two parks and to Euclid Avenue
Read the Ashland Park guide →
Bell Court
About 49 acres, less than a tenth of a square mile, wedged between Boonesboro Avenue, Walton Avenue, East Main Street and Forest and Delmar Avenues. Inside that footprint are 157 buildings, nearly all of them homes, in one of Lexington's most concentrated historic districts. Greek Revival and Italianate at the oldest end, Queen Anne from around 1900, Arts and Crafts, Colonial Revival and bungalows scattered through. It grew up around the Bell House, first built in 1846 to a design by Thomas Lewinski and rebuilt after a fire around 1885, which Clara Bell Walsh and her mother announced in 1940 they were giving to the city and which now anchors a public park in the middle of the neighborhood. Mirror Twin Brewing on National Avenue and Eppings on Eastside on Walton Avenue are a short walk away, both just outside the neighborhood, and East Main leads the other way into downtown, with the Legacy Trail entrance just outside. The Jif plant on Winchester Road is close enough to smell, and I like the smell.
Best for: less than a tenth of a square mile you can cross on foot, 157 historic buildings, Legacy Trail access
Read the Bell Court guide →Downtown living
Condos and historic homes in the downtown core and the sub-districts around it, Gratz Park, North Limestone and Aylesford Place.
Downtown Lexington
Not one neighborhood but a cluster: the core around Main Street, Cheapside and the old courthouse, plus Gratz Park, a tract dating to 1781 and a National Register district since 1973, the North Limestone corridor, and Aylesford Place. The Distillery District sits about a mile and a half west on Manchester Street, technically its own district but close enough that downtown residents drive to it regularly. Redfin counted five downtown sales from July to mid-October 2026, from a condo at about $178,000 to a unit at about $1.25 million. Rupp Arena and the Lexington Opera House are here, along with the East Main restaurant row, Town Branch Commons a short walk away, and the Legacy Trail starting about a mile east. Most recurring events run on or near Main Street, from the St. Patrick's parade in March to the Holiday Parade in December. The commercial core is on daily collection rather than a weekly cart day.
Best for: walking to Main Street restaurants, condo living, being inside the event footprint
Read the Downtown Lexington guide →Established, inside New Circle
Neighborhoods platted from the 1950s on, just inside New Circle Road, each with a shopping center at its edge or inside it.
Idle Hour
A post-war neighborhood about three miles southeast of downtown along Richmond Road, developed in the 1950s and early 1960s by William Blackerby, who named the streets after his own family with the word Saint attached. That is why the map reads St. Phillip, St. Ann, St. Margaret and St. William. The housing runs from expansive ranches backing up to the golf course to more compact houses and small apartment buildings, on about half a square mile bounded by the country club, the CSX tracks, New Circle Road and Richmond Road. Blackerby also developed the Idle Hour Shopping Center at 2051 Richmond Road, which sits right at the edge of the neighborhood, has been an anchor for decades and still holds O’Neill’s Irish Pub. The neighborhood also has its own park, about 24 acres, and the Lexington Senior Center, which opened there in 2016. The private Idle Hour Country Club was founded in 1946 on a 1924 Donald Ross course.
Best for: ranches and more compact houses from the 1950s and early 1960s, a park inside the neighborhood and a shopping center at its edge
Read the Idle Hour guide →
Lansdowne
A south-side neighborhood just inside New Circle Road, between Tates Creek Road and Nicholasville Road, with about 1,230 residential addresses, built from the mid-1950s into the 1970s. The homes are single-family, and the tree cover is mature. The Lansdowne Shoppes is the retail and dining center and it sits inside the neighborhood, with The Fresh Market as the grocery anchor, The Mousetrap, Malone’s and Drake’s for a sit-down meal, and The Mad Potter for painting pottery. The Cellar Bar and Grille is on the lower level of the Signature Club of Lansdowne on Lansdowne Drive; the club is private but the Cellar is open to everyone. Lansdowne Elementary is on Redding Road just off the southern edge.
Best for: single-family homes from the mid-1950s into the 1970s, a grocery and restaurants inside the neighborhood, a central south-side location
Read the Lansdowne guide →South and southwest
The Southland Drive corridor off Nicholasville Road, and two association areas on the southwest side, Beaumont between Harrodsburg Road and Man o' War Boulevard and Palomar off Harrodsburg Road. Southland's shops are on the street itself, Beaumont has a retail and office park inside its boundary, and Palomar Centre sits just outside Palomar's.
Southland
The Southland Drive corridor in south Lexington, from Nicholasville Road to Rosemont Garden, and the seven registered neighborhoods on it or just off it. The shops are on the street itself, among them the Local Lex Market, Marikka's and the Doo Wop Shop, and the Lexington Farmers Market holds its Sunday market there from April through October. The Southland Association, a corridor-wide group laid over the neighborhood associations, puts on the Southland Street Fair every fall. The whole street is in 40503 and collects trash on Monday.
Best for: a Sunday farmers market on the street, the fall street fair, local shops along Southland Drive
Read the Southland guide →Beaumont
The Beaumont Residential Association area in southwest Lexington, between Harrodsburg Road and Man o' War Boulevard with New Circle Road to the north. Beaumont Centre, along Beaumont Centre Parkway, Circle and Lane, is its retail and office park, and Moondance Amphitheater, a city facility inside the boundary, hosts the free Summer Nights in Suburbia concerts every other Friday in summer and the Southland Jamboree on summer Thursdays. Almost all of it is in 40513 and council district 10, with a Thursday trash day.
Best for: free summer concerts at Moondance Amphitheater, a retail and office park inside the neighborhood, New Circle Road at the edge
Read the Beaumont guide →Palomar
The Palomar Hills Community Association area off Harrodsburg Road near Man o' War Boulevard, about 200 acres that the association places on the eastern edge of Mill Ridge Farm. The association runs a clubhouse with three pools, tennis and basketball courts, a playground and a walking trail. Palomar Centre, the shopping center that carries the name, sits just outside the boundary on Harrodsburg Road, with Sedona Taphouse and John's Run/Walk Shop among its tenants. It is all 40513, with a Thursday trash day, and nearly all of it is in council district 9.
Best for: an association clubhouse and pools, a shopping center at the edge of the neighborhood, Harrodsburg Road access
Read the Palomar guide →Farther out, southeast and northwest
Curved streets, five to six and a half miles from downtown by car. Hamburg's homes sit beside the retail built on the old Hamburg Place farm, Andover's subdivisions grew up around a golf course from the late 1980s through the 1990s, and Masterson Station has been platted in phases since 1995.
Hamburg
Southeastern Lexington at the I-75 and Man O' War interchange, Exit 108, built on what was John E. Madden's Hamburg Place, one of the most successful thoroughbred breeding farms in the country. Madden bought a colt named Hamburg for $1,200, sold him in December 1897 for $40,001, and bought the farm with the proceeds. Sir Barton, the first Triple Crown winner, was bred here. The streets of the commercial development are named for the farm's horses, which is why you drive Sir Barton Way and Plaudit Place, and the Hamburg Place Horse Cemetery is still a small park among the big-box stores, open to the public. Today it is six named retail areas, Baptist Health Hamburg, 41 acres where UK HealthCare plans an outpatient building, with no construction reported as of October 2026, and a 44-acre mixed-use project called Hamburg East. Collection day genuinely varies by block out here.
Best for: big-box and chain shopping, quick I-75 and I-64 access, a horse cemetery park among the stores
Read the Hamburg guide →
Andover
Not one neighborhood but a cluster of six or more subdivisions south of Todds Road that share the Andover name and a common origin: they were developed around a private 18-hole golf and country club from the late 1980s through the 1990s. Andover Hills and Andover Forest are the two large named ones, each with its own association, and several smaller villa and townhome associations sit inside or beside them. Which one an address falls in changes the board, the dues, and sometimes the schools and the collection day. The club opened around 1990, Whitaker Bank foreclosed in February 2017 after the owner's bankruptcy and bought it at auction, and in 2018 six of the surrounding associations agreed to buy it from the bank for $3.15 million. They own and maintain about 145 acres of it as green space and walking trails. Jacobson Park sits to the west of Andover Hills, and Hamburg retail is a short drive north.
Best for: large single-family homes, 145 acres of neighborhood-owned green space, Jacobson Park next door
Read the Andover guide →
Masterson Station
One of the largest subdivisions in Lexington, about 2,600 residential addresses on the northwest side of the city, bounded by Masterson Station Park, Leestown Road, Greendale Road and Spurr Road. It was platted in phases from the mid-1990s onward, which is why county records carry four section names, the plain Masterson Station on the earliest plats, then Greendale Hills, Masterson Depriest and Masterson Hills. Masterson Station Park, at its western edge, is over 600 acres with a dog park, 18 soccer fields, a spray ground, a playground, paved and unpaved trails and an equestrian complex with an indoor arena and a cross country course. The Bluegrass Fair runs there every June. Development along the Lucille Drive extension brought Smashing Tomato, Ramsey’s Diner and Osaka, just outside the neighborhood to the south, within walking distance of part of it, and the whole subdivision collects on Thursday.
Best for: over 600 acres of park at the edge of the subdivision, newer construction, mostly flat streets for running and walking
Read the Masterson Station guide →Where they are
Pinned on the map: Chevy Chase, Downtown Lexington, Hamburg, Ashland Park, Andover, Idle Hour, Bell Court, Masterson Station, Lansdowne, Southland, Beaumont, Palomar. Each pin sits on a landmark inside the neighborhood or at the center of its boundary rather than on a boundary line, and each guide describes its own area.
Which part of town each one is in
Measured from the courthouse block on North Limestone to the middle of each neighborhood's boundary, except Chevy Chase and Southland, which are listed the way their guides describe them.
Central. Downtown.
Southeast. Bell Court, Ashland Park, Chevy Chase, Idle Hour, Hamburg and Andover.
South. Lansdowne and Southland.
Southwest. Beaumont and Palomar.
Northwest. Masterson Station.
Some registered neighborhood associations without a guide here, measured the same way and in a straight line, are Kenwick about a mile and a half southeast, Cardinal Valley about two miles west, Meadowthorpe about two miles northwest, Garden Springs about three miles southwest and Wellington about four miles southwest.
How to choose
Five things worth checking against a specific address before you fall for a neighborhood.
School zone. Fayette County Public Schools assigns students by address. Counting every city address point inside the boundary found one set of zones at every address in Chevy Chase, Ashland Park, Idle Hour, Bell Court, Lansdowne, Beaumont and Palomar. Andover, Masterson Station, Hamburg, Downtown and Southland split. Andover's count covers its two large associations, Hamburg's covers The Shetlands, Prestwick and Hamburg Farms, and Southland's covers the four association areas along Southland Drive. In those five a guide can tell you the likely schools but not yours. Check an address against the Lexington school zone lookup.
Trash day. Five of the twelve neighborhoods here straddle more than one collection area, so the day is a property of your block rather than your neighborhood. The trash pickup map and address lookup gives the answer for one address.
Council district. Who represents you, and which district office handles a pothole or a zoning notice, also changes inside some of these neighborhoods. The city council district lookup names your district and your council member.
Neighborhood association. The directory of every registered association lists all 210 of them with a lookup, which also answers “what neighborhood am I in” for a specific address.
Reported crime. The Lexington crime map shows reported incidents by location, from police open records. It does not rank neighborhoods and neither does this page. If you want the longer version of what that data can and cannot tell you, there is an honest local take on Lexington safety.
Frequently asked questions
What are the best neighborhoods in Lexington, KY?
It depends entirely on what you are optimizing for, which is why this page leads with a table instead of a ranking. Every guide here has at least three restaurants within half a mile on foot of its boundary, and in Chevy Chase, Downtown, Lansdowne, Southland and Beaumont the nearest three are inside it. If you want the most recently built homes, the plat records point to Beaumont and Masterson Station. If a short trip to the University of Kentucky matters most, Chevy Chase is a short walk from campus.
What is the safest neighborhood in Lexington?
This site does not name one, and it does not rank Lexington neighborhoods on safety. What it publishes instead is a crime map built from Lexington Police open records, where you can look at any address and see reported incidents by location. Incident counts do differ by area, and the map lets you check the specific blocks you are considering rather than take a label for a whole neighborhood. There is also a longer piece on the site, an honest local take on Lexington safety, about what the data can and cannot tell you.
Is Lexington a good place to live?
It is a mid-sized city with a working downtown and a major university, and the federal Bureau of Economic Analysis put its prices about 7 percent below the national average for 2024. The trade-offs are real too. Rush hour on Nicholasville Road and New Circle is bad, most of the city assumes you drive, and wages run lower, with an annual mean wage of $62,210 in the Lexington-Fayette metro against $69,770 nationally in May 2025, per the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The moving guide on this site goes through the trade-offs in detail.
What neighborhood am I in?
Use the address lookup on the neighborhood associations page. It takes a street address and returns the neighborhood association registered with the city whose boundary contains it. Bear in mind that some well-known areas have no association boundary in the city's layer, Chevy Chase and Hamburg among them, so the answer for an address there may be a smaller association or none.
How many neighborhoods does Lexington have?
There are 210 neighborhood associations registered with the Lexington-Fayette Urban County Government, and this site publishes all of them with their council district and collection day. That count undersells the number of neighborhoods, since some well-known areas, Chevy Chase and Hamburg among them, have no association boundary in the city's layer, and some associations cover a single townhome development rather than a neighborhood.
Which Lexington neighborhoods are closest to downtown and to UK?
Measured as a drive to the courthouse block on North Limestone, Downtown is about half a mile and Bell Court about a mile. Ashland Park's guide puts it about a mile and a quarter east of downtown, and Chevy Chase is about two miles. Idle Hour is about three miles, Lansdowne and Southland each about three and a half, Beaumont about four and a half, Masterson Station about five, Hamburg and Palomar each about five and a half, and Andover about six and a half. For the University of Kentucky specifically, Chevy Chase is a short walk from campus.
Where are the newest homes being built in Lexington?
Going by the plat records on each guide, Beaumont and Masterson Station are the most recently built of the twelve. Most Beaumont lots were platted from the mid-1990s through the 2000s, and Masterson Station has been platted in phases since 1995, with later sections recorded in 2002, 2004 and 2007 and Masterson Hills units as late as 2019. Building goes on nearby. At least one builder markets newer homes under the Masterson Hills name on land outside the Masterson Station association, and the 44-acre Hamburg East project began site work in 2024, though as of October 2026 the city shows no buildings up on the site. Masterson Station also has a new elementary school under construction at 1411 Greendale Road, just east of the neighborhood.
What is the most expensive neighborhood in Lexington?
This site does not rank them. Chevy Chase home prices are among the highest in Lexington, and a Stacker analysis of Redfin data ranked it fourth in the city by median sale price. Ashland Park's four Redfin sales from July through September 2026 ran from $192,000 for a condo to $1.2 million for a house, too few for a median worth quoting. The table above gives the figures each neighborhood guide states.