Lacy

Lacy covers 174.1 acres and the county records 412 parcels and 359 site addresses inside the boundary, on 474 distinct legal lots, at a median lot of 6,171 square feet. Twenty seven named streets run 7.71 miles within it, First through Sixth Streets crossing Lacy St, French St, Brown St, Halladay St, Hickory St and Lacy Crossing Dr. Almost the whole of the zoned area, 119.1 acres, sits in Specific Development No. 84, and the general plan carries 76.4 acres as urban neighborhood and 36 acres as district center.

Four city facilities sit inside the boundary: Plaza Calle Cuatro, an urban plaza of 0.2 acres with a stage amphitheater and public art, Mariposa Park at 0.4 acres with a skate park and a playground, Garfield Fitness Park at 0.1 acres and Legacy Square Park. The open space layer adds Familias Corazones Verdes Park at 0.58 acres and the Garfield Community Center. Twenty two properties inside the boundary sit on the city historic register, among them the Brunner Building and old city jail, the Ebell Club and the Episcopal Church of the Messiah.

The neighborhood takes its name from Lacy Street, and the Lacys were an Alabama family who put down deep roots in early Santa Ana. Dr. John McClellan Lacy was born at Huntsville on February 22, 1837, moved with his family to Arkansas at eighteen, studied at the St. Louis Medical College and took his medical degree at the University of Nashville in 1861, and served as a surgeon with the 37th Arkansas Infantry in the Confederate army to the end of the war. In 1879 he crossed the plains by wagon and became one of Santa Ana's pioneer physicians. He served one term on the city council and three terms as city health officer, helped organize the First Presbyterian Church, and died on February 2, 1913. His youngest brother, Theo Lacy, went on to serve sixteen years as sheriff of Orange County, and the Bowers Museum credits Lacy Street to the sheriff. The county's parcel record still carries Dr. J. M. Lacy's Addition inside this boundary, so both brothers are written into the ground.

This is some of the oldest built land in the city, immediately east of downtown, and the street itself shows it. A long run of houses on North Lacy Street sits on the Santa Ana Register of Historic Properties, among them the Duggan House, the Harmon McNeil House and the house that belonged to Terry Stephenson, the newspaperman who wrote much of what we know about early Orange County.