On the chilly afternoon of April 15, 1910, after more than two decades of on-and-off-again negotiations, Manchester’s long-serving mayor, Henry A. Maurice, presents Richmond’s mayor, David Crockett Richardson, with a large red, white and blue floral “key to the city” emblazoned with a “Greater Richmond” banner.
Mayor Maurice declares, “The South Side will become an asset greater than ever you have calculated on. We have had great possibilities but did not have the capital to compete with our larger neighbor. But as a united municipality, we expect to see Washington Ward grow and multiply and her buildings reach up as skyscrapers.”
In a recent Richmond Bizsense interview, Brent Graves of Manchester Properties LLC spoke about rezoning the Taylor & Parrish Construction property as a mixed-use development. Sounding like Mayor Maurice, Graves is quoted saying, “There’s a bigger narrative happening in Manchester that makes whatever happens on this site so important. I think Manchester will eventually become a ‘City of the Future.’ ”
Fashion takes to the streets during the Hull Street Festival.
Full-Scale
The Manchester Alliance community and business association, founded in 2007 by David Bass, the current president, champions rezoning to encourage mixed use in new construction that includes “corner commercial.” They’d like to see a commercial “H” bounded by Hull Street, Semmes Avenue and Seventh Street. “We should have our Broad, our Main, our Robinson streets,” Bass muses. “This is a smaller scale because of smaller spaces.”
“We wanted to be a neighborhood, not this edge frontier,” Bass recalls of his earlier Manchester days. “Slowly but surely — and maybe, quickly in terms of urban redevelopment — we’re becoming a full-scale neighborhood.”
Gallery goers at Art Works' 4th Friday exhibition
‘Dogtown, After All’
Art Works gallery’s first exhibition opened in the former WestVaCo building in September 2003 when, as Glenda Kotchish recalls, “People from the suburbs didn’t venture into the area, except, of course, artists. Sam Macdonald had a big sign on the building at 201 Hull Street — ‘Condos Coming Soon’— there was that. That was all.”
Kotchish reflects, “Within a few years we started seeing people living in Manchester, walking their dogs, and now we see people pushing their baby carriages, coming and going to work, and yes, there’s still the dogs. It’s Dogtown, after all.”
Karl Zweerink, a counselor at the Maggie L. Walker Governor’s School, rides across the T-Pot Bridge on his daily commute.
So Happy Together
Richmond’s first co-housing project — a four-story, 19-unit condo that includes a large common area with a kitchen, dining and meeting areas created to encourage interaction between the residents — is slated to open at 901 Porter St. next year.
Karl Zweerink and wife Laurel West, who moved to Richmond from New York City 25 years ago to raise their children, are renting while they wait for their Porter Street condo’s completion. They lived in the Carillon and Oxford neighborhoods, but, now as empty nesters, they seek something different.
“We were looking for a neighborhood that was urban and close to the city center; walkable and bikable with amenities,” Zweerink says.
He expresses his satisfaction about Manchester’s access to nature and the river. An avid cyclist, who rides across the T. Tyler Potterfield Memorial Bridge daily, Zweerink says, “It’s a wonderful way to start the day with the sun coming up over the skyline, sometimes mist on the water, the birds.”
Manchester resident Ann Kramer enjoys Tricycle Gardens and the nearness of the river and parks.
Going Up
Ann Kramer is taking the co-housing route, too. She went to Virginia Commonwealth University in the late 1970s and worked on the first staff of the Tobacco Company Restaurant in Shockoe Slip.
“I’ve seen Richmond over the long haul,” she says, having with her husband been in and out of the city while living in other places near and far.
“One of the things that hit home for me is that some cities have voraciously sprawled,” she observes. “Yes, Short Pump wasn’t there 40 years ago, but it’s not like Atlanta or Tampa, which are insanity for sprawl. You look at Manchester, and it’s essentially a huge infill. It’s not spreading out — it’s going up.” Kramer enjoys the presence of Tricycle Gardens and the nearness of the river and parks.
“Food systems are huge for me,” she states. Although the persistent question about Manchester — when a grocery store will emerge — doesn’t trouble her much.
“You’ve had 10,000 people move here in the past several years; we’ve got to be approaching the point where the grocery demographics will cause a store to open,” she says.
Erin Fuselier and Dave Grossman and their chickens in the backyard of their Porter Street home.
House Hunting
Affordability and walkability put Erin Fuselier and Dave Grossman into their second Manchester home. When walking their dogs from their Bainbridge Street house they encountered a house on Porter Street with a sizable garage for their bicycles and a yard large enough to accommodate chickens.
In 2007 Wachovia Securities transferred Fuselier to St. Louis, where she met Grossman. She brought him to Richmond for a few visits, and during their engagement party, it clicked. “He fell in love,” she recalls — with Richmond. “I’d never been in a city like this,” says Grossman. “The beautiful bridge, the breweries. One of the best mountain bike trails I’ve ever been on.”
Drew Raine has an unusual reverse commute: he lives in Manchester and drives into Bon Air to his family’s printing business. Raised in Midlothian, he knew Manchester as a place college kids went who couldn’t afford the Fan and visited friends there before attending the University of New Orleans to study naval architecture and marine engineering. He returned to the city after Hurricane Katrina and bought an older house on Bainbridge Street — named for Commodore William Bainbridge, who battled the North African Barbary pirates — which seems appropriate, considering his studies.
“I’d like to see more restaurants, a grocery store — and home ownership,” Raine says. “The actual houses that come on the market are few and far between.” A friend he used to visit in Manchester, currently living in California, now wants a house in the old neighborhood. “He tells me to keep an eye out for him, but he may be waiting a while.”
Entrepreneur and advocate for community Ajay Brewer enjoys a cup of joe outside of his coffee shop, Brewer’s Café.
Working Forward
Anthony “Ajay” Brewer’s Bainbridge Street cafe is fulfilling the grand tradition of coffee shops by serving more than a cup of joe and a nosh. Brewer’s Cafe is a community gathering place for conversation, music and, from March to October, a First Fridays street event. Brewer, an advocate for the place where he lives and works, has deep family connections to Manchester and adjacent Blackwell that brought him back to the old neighborhood following a career as a stockbroker. The cafe opened in October 2015 and soon began appearing in the pages of The New York Times, Travel + Leisure, and, recently, BuzzFeed.
“I don’t want the history and legacies of the neighborhood getting lost.” —Ajay Brewer
“I never thought that we’d get that kind of recognition,” he reflects. He believed that by applying his personality and ambition to a goal, he’d eventually see some form of success. The cafe created a springboard for a satellite in Church Hill’s Market at 25th and the recently opened Brewer’s Waffles (and milkshakes), which is connected by a doorway to an art gallery he dubbed The Well. “Back when I was coming up, that was what we called Blackwell,” he explains. “I don’t want the history and legacies of the neighborhood getting lost in the post-industrial transformation of Manchester.”
That history was often difficult. In his grandparents’ time, blacks were actively discouraged from crossing beyond 14th Street. Much has changed since then. The arrival of apartments has brought more people, but, Brewer reflects, this can encourage transitional living. People will put down roots if they can support not only locally run enterprises but also the public schools. He’d like to see greater home ownership and more minority- and female-run businesses.
“It’s one thing to compare the present Manchester and Blackwell to what it was 10 years ago,” he muses, “but what I want to compare it to is Carytown and the Fan. There’s work left to be done.”
The Ages of Manchester
ROCKY RIDGE
(1736-69): Warehouses and docks rise around William Byrd’s plantation. The area known by the Algonquian-speaking natives as Manastoh is renamed Manchester after England’s industrial center.
EARLY INDUSTRIAL
(1769-ca. 1830): The town evolves into a trade center for both tobacco and slaves. Richmond and Manchester are connected in 1788 by John Mayo Jr.’s long-planned toll bridge.
MIDDLE INDUSTRIAL
(1830s-1860s): Manchester rivals Richmond in commerce, textiles and milling. Coal is hauled from Chesterfield County mines to Manchester’s docks by the gravity- and mule-powered Chesterfield Railroad. Floods wipe away Mayo’s bridge five times before 1865, when retreating Confederates blow it up.
LATE INDUSTRIAL
(1870s-1910): Manchester resumes business after the war, becoming a city in 1874. The “Dogtown” description enters the Richmond lexicon.
COMMERCIAL CENTER
(1910-ca.1960): Manchester becomes part of the city of Richmond, and it is connected in 1911 by the arched concrete Mayo’s (14th Street) Bridge and streetcars.
DECLINE
(ca.1960-1980s): Suburban exodus and the 1970s expansion of public housing into the residential districts Oak Grove and Blackwell change the neighborhood. Richmond focuses on various downtown redevelopment schemes and turns its back on Manchester.
EARLY RENEWAL
(1990s-2001): Legend Brewing Co. opens a small pub next to its brewery at 321 W. Seventh St. in 1992. The south side of the Floodwall, completed in 1995, offers dramatic river and skyline views and connects to the Manchester Slave Trail.
REDISCOVERY
(2002-07): In 2002, following a decade of civic effort, the Virginia Department of Historic Resources recognizes the Manchester Residential-Commercial Historic District. The neighborhood enters the National Register of Historic Places in 2006.
ONWARD AND UPWARD
(2008-present): Cranes and construction sites proliferate. The T. Tyler Potterfield Memorial Bridge opens for pedestrian and cyclist use. Hull Street Action forms to encourage development and work with the long-established Hull Street Merchants Association.
