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This aerial image of Maymont Park, taken in the early 1930s, shows the fields and woods that were to become the River View development. The area didn’t fill in until the 1940s, when it came to be known as the Maymont neighborhood. (Photo courtesy Maymont Mansion Archives)
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A map of the Maymont neighborhood
Allen Finch, an enthusiastic mountain biker and trail runner, discovered his house in the Maymont neighborhood while riding the James River Park System’s North Bank trail.
About three years ago, the then-Oregon Hill resident began seeing changes at the end of Carter Street, near a bluff that falls away to Texas Beach and the James River. It’s where users of the North Bank Trail are routed into the neighborhood for a few blocks before reconnecting with the trail.
“The mountain bikers come out of the woods and say, ‘Where is this? We didn’t know this was back here.’ ” —Allen Finch
He watched as a property with a traditional 1940s brick rancher was transformed into a small enclave of five new houses, one Finch and his family now call home. It’s a large contemporary Craftsman house with a wraparound porch overlooking the woods toward the rushing river.
“The mountain bikers come out of the woods and say, … ‘Where is this? We didn’t know this was back here,’ ” Finch says.
They’ve found themselves in Kansas. Kansas Avenue, that is — of Maymont. Not the park, but the nearby community.
Allen Finch and his daughter Julia enjoy the view of the James River from the porch of their Maymont home. (Photo by Jay Paul)
‘Highest, Healthiest Location’
In 1890 a real estate advertisement by the firm of developer Richard Booker Chaffin touted River View — as the neighborhood was then called — for its “Elegant Home Sites in the Growing West End” and its “Highest, Healthiest Location Near Richmond.” An electric streetcar line ran into River View, making a convenient commute from what was then part of Henrico County into town.
The planned streets took state names — Texas, Kansas, Colorado and Virginia (now Hampton Street). Mt. Calvary Cemetery (1880) and Riverview Cemetery (1887) lined up along the eastern side. Chaffin lived within the bounds of the proposed neighborhood, at a house he named River View. His properties adjoined a dairy farm that from 1886 to 1895 grew into the Victorian country estate of railroad executive and civic leader James Dooley and wife Sallie May. The estate was named Maymont.
The Dooley mansion at Maymont park, from which the neighborhood takes its name (Photo by Jay Paul)
The neighborhood was slow to develop, as Dooley resisted the city’s efforts to annex Maymont. “River View” didn’t see much growth until after the deaths of the principal land owners: Chaffin in 1905, James Dooley in 1922 and Sallie in 1925.
The Dooleys willed the Maymont estate to the city. At some point, the neighborhood took on the name of the Dooleys’s estate.
The Great Depression and World War II again stunted Maymont’s growth until it ultimately burst forth with an assortment of multilevel brick houses for young, mostly African-American middle-class families, mixed in with a few older farm places and stylish Midcentury modern homes.
Schools came with development: Maymont — now a preschool for Richmond Public Schools — and Amelia Street School, which serves students with cognitive and physical disabilities. A few blocks away, The Virginia Home for adults with physical disabilities celebrates its 125th anniversary this year.
Currently, the neighborhood is working to raise $80,000 to complete a playground and community space off Texas Avenue, adjacent to a former basketball court that the Richmond Area Skateboard Alliance converted into the Treasure Island Skate Park, a project completed just last year.
Most Richmonders who know the neighborhood associate it with the James River Parks, the North Bank Trail, Texas Beach and Maymont Park’s events. But for some, Maymont is their longtime home.
Sixty years ago Agnes Wilder Nicholson moved with her husband to Maymont, where the couple raised their children and where she still resides. (Photo by Jay Paul)
An Original
More than 60 years ago, Agnes Wilder Nicholson moved from her in-laws’ home in Brook Field to Maymont, which was then becoming a tightly knit middle-class African-American neighborhood.
“Many of our friends were building and moving to Glen Allen,” recalls Nicholson, a lifelong city resident whose Church Hill family included eight children, including brother Doug — who grew up to be Virginia’s, and the country’s, first African-American governor. Nicholson’s late husband, Charles, didn’t want to move out of the city, however. “We found this place, and we really liked it,” she says of her Midcentury brick tri-level.
Their two children attended the nearby Maymont School with other neighborhood kids. “They played together, they went to school here, some of them went on to college together, and they moved back,” Nicholson says. She worked as a secretary at the same school, just a five-minute walk from home.
Maymont then, and now, boasted a robust civic association, active in organizing community events from holiday parties to voting drives.
Nicholson is seeing young parents pushing strollers with their older children and dogs in tow. “You see more of the parents with their children than when I first came,” Nicholson says.
The popular Texas Beach draws many visitors to the Maymont neighborhood. (Photo by Jay Paul)
Destination Texas Beach
Joy Rogers is one of those younger parents who discovered the neighborhood by going with friends to Texas Beach in the 1990s.
“It wasn’t quite the destination it is now,” says Rogers, now vice-president of the Maymont Civic League. She moved with her then boyfriend — now husband — Seamus, from the Museum District, and today they have two young sons. During her 11 years in the neighborhood she’s seen improvements to the North Bank Trail and better access to Texas Beach. This on occasion has drawn more traffic, speeding and trash, though recent changes in stop signs have assisted with traffic flow. “On the upside, you can walk to the [Maymont] Jazz Festival, and the other events, like Herbs Galore, that bring people in,” she says.
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Krystal Douglas and her daughter Toriania Neville, 11, moved into the neighborhood last summer, taking ownership of a home renovated by Habitat for Humanity. (Photo by Jay Paul)
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Douglas’ home is one of several former RRHA properties that are being rehabbed into affordable housing by Habitat and Project:HOMES. (Photo by Jay Paul)
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In the 1960s, a handful of houses were relocated from the Randolph neighborhood to a Kansas Avenue cul-de-sac during construction of the Downtown Expressway. (Photo courtesy Richmond Times-Dispatch)
A Place to Call Home
When the Downtown Expressway ripped through the Randolph neighborhood in the 1960s, trucks hauled a handful of its houses out of the way, some to a Kansas Avenue cul-de-sac. Richmond Redevelopment and Housing Administration (RRHA) owned the homes until recently, when Richmond Metropolitan Habitat for Humanity and Project:HOMES began renovating the RRHA properties into affordable housing.
Krystal Douglas, a mother of five and certified nursing assistant, moved into her Habitat home in August. Previously, she lived in Section 8 housing off Broad Rock Road. “There was a lot of violence,” she says. As required by Habitat, she attended a series of classes on homeownership and budgeting and contributed 350 volunteer hours helping to renovate her house and the homes of others. Now she has a fenced yard and a zero-interest mortgage in a neighborhood where her kids can run around without fear of gunfire.
Maymont then, and now, boasted a robust civic association, active in organizing community events from holiday parties to voting drives.
Douglas previously didn’t know anything about Maymont, aside from school field trips to the park. “It’s wonderful back here,” she says. “I don’t have to be on tippy toes wondering about what might happen.”
The sentiment is echoed by Finch, who a year ago moved into the house he saw under construction while mountain biking on the trails. “It’s kind of magical,” he says from his porch, watching the last of the day draining vivid color, and hearing the rush of the river.
