The hard-working house at 2907 Park Ave. (Photo by Jay Paul)
WHAT: A former small residence turned office space
WHERE: 2907 Park Ave.
WHY IT MATTERS: A good, if small, example of adaptive reuse in the Museum District, otherwise known for big houses with storied pasts
The big tree, in spring, almost obscures the little place. Taller and more noticeable two-story neighbors serve as parentheses to the building’s brief statement. It sits above the grade, with an entranceway broken up into a geometric expression of steps and planter terraces. The house, of not much more than 1,200 square feet, provided a home for a number of working- and middle-class residents for almost half of its century-and-change existence before entering its current life as offices.
The city directory of 1907 lists just three structures in Park Avenue’s 2900 block — 2900, 2901 and 2922. Then, in what would’ve been the fall of 1908, comes 2907 and one Richard J. Slaughter, whose occupation isn’t listed, though he remains there for about five years.
From 1913-14, William J. Stone lives at 2907 Park Ave. One year, he’s president of the Virginia Conference of Seventh-Day Adventists, and the next, he’s the president of the Virginia Tract Society, a statewide branch of a national group that distributed religious and inspirational literature.
Fred E. Burton, an embalmer, moved in during 1927. He worked a block away at the L.T. Christian Funeral Home. That building still stands as the Park Place office building where Patterson Avenue meets Boulevard.
At a decade of residence, from 1930-40, the longest-running tenant of 2907 is Henry Grady Dickens and his wife, Jessie L. Dickens. Henry works at various positions on the Atlantic Coast Line Railroad: trainman, flagman, brakeman and conductor. For at least three years, James H. Dickens — his relationship to the couple unknown — shares their residence, and his occupation receives the unadorned job description of “weather stripping.”
Violet E. Christian lives there one year, 1948, while working as a binder at Mitchell & Hotchkiss, printers, located at 10 N. 18th St.
Not long after come James E. Turner and wife Ethel E., from 1950-55. He’s a mechanic, at first for Lawrence Motor Co., then located at 1017 N. Boulevard. Ethel starts work at Kaufmann & Co., a long-established firm selling women’s hats and accessories, then located at 2020-22 W. Broad St.
After they depart, Samuel D. Baughman, insurance, and James E. Timberlake & Son open up shop at 2907, although, according to the directory, at first both the Baughmans and Timberlakes live at 5510 Buckingham Road in Chesterfield County. The shared office space seems to have ended in 1959. The firm passed from father to son. In July 2013, the Richmond-based Andrew Agency acquired Baughman Insurance Services.
Brett Hunnicutt of Hunnicutt Construction, which now occupies the house, replied in an email that the company replaced an insurance firm, run then by the son of its founder. The house, Hunnicutt says, didn’t appear to have changed much over the years.
“There were a few rooms that I am sure had been rearranged since it was a house,” he says. “There were two long, skinny bathrooms off the main hall, but nothing that would have fit the use as a home. There is an old porch that was probably closed in at one time ... We removed most of the original walls from the interior when we remodeled, so it would be impossible to try to figure out an original layout.”
