An oasis of green, Scuffletown is an inviting gathering spot for friends and neighbors.
WHAT: A city pocket park
WHERE: Between Strawberry Street and Stafford, Park and Stuart avenues
WHY IT MATTERS: A late 18th-century inn gave way to a community effort to maintain a green space.
Scuffletown Park embraces one of the formative components of the Fan District. The community garden and its social aspects — even a Little Free Library — carry a deeper than expected connection to this parcel’s past.
On the present southwest corner of Park Avenue and Strawberry Street stood Scuffletown Tavern (ca. 1792-1910), first operated by William Collins. The house had seven rooms and five fireplaces, and outbuildings for kitchen, smoke and carriage houses, plus a barn and stable.
The tavern’s sign/logo — that somehow hasn’t been adopted by a trendy gastropub, a band or even for a T-shirt — featured a globe with a man’s head and shoulders emerging out of the North Pole and feet protruding from the South and the phrase “Help a Scuffler Through.”
“Scuffletown” in the late 18th century consisted of several wood frame houses and dependencies scattered along a turn of the Westham Road (Park Avenue) between today’s Rowland Street and Allen Avenue. The origin of “Scuffletown” is of some question. Perhaps the sign holds the answer. This would’ve been where fatigued, perhaps scuffling, travelers would take rest. In 1804 Scuffletown became home for Elisha and Phoebe Williams and their eight children. The inn trade would have soon diminished, as that year the Virginia legislature established turnpikes to facilitate the transportation of coal from Henrico and Goochland counties.
A trio of landowners and builders in 1817 platted out a town they dubbed “Sydney.” Hills were flattened and streets laid out, but by 1819, after the construction of a few houses, a national economic crash ate extended credit. The Sydney vision evaporated.
The park is a cool place to relax and enjoy treats purchased from Strawberry Street merchants.
In May 1825, Richard Reins (1796-1870), a 27-year-old Church Hill brick contractor, bought 35 of the remaining lots from Sydney principal Benjamin J. Harris. He purchased the Scuffletown Tavern for $546 and moved his family there. Reins, though a contractor and builder, didn’t place houses on his accumulated properties, which by 1840 encompassed 42 acres. He instead cultivated fruits and vegetables. Old Scuffletown Road became Park Avenue, the name derived from a revitalized Monroe Park. A Colonial Revival duplex replaced a portion of Scuffletown Tavern on its former corner. There, on Nov. 18, 1926, Hunter Stagg (1895-1960), a writer and salon host, held a gathering for Harlem Renaissance poet Langston Hughes. He’d come to Richmond for his first speaking engagement in the South, at Virginia Union University. Stagg knew of Hughes through writer Carl Van Vechten.
“If Thursday evening in my library can by any stretch of imagination be called a party,” Stagg wrote a friend, “it should go down in history as the first purely social affair given by a white for a Negro in the Ancient and Honorable Commonwealth of Virginia.”
Hughes later said that “[Stagg] is a beautiful and entertaining person who ought to draw a salary for just being alive.”
Stagg devised a “Hard Daddy” cocktail to help ease the evening and selected the name from one of Hughes’ “blues.” The potent potable consisted of whiskey, lemon juice and maple syrup over ice.
Hughes described the gathering as “delightful” and how “the cocktail shaker was never empty. … Not a soul refused to shake hands with me and we all had too good a time! And nobody choked in the traditional Southern manner when the anchovies and crackers went ’round because they were eating with a Negro. And after three ‘Hard Daddys’ all the glasses got mixed up.”
In the mid-1960s, with an eye to historic roots, members of the new Fan District Association suggested returning Park Avenue’s designation to Scuffletown Road. That didn’t occur, but on Sept. 14, 1974, a pocket park opened with the Scuffletown name. It featured architect Carlton Abbott’s concrete geometric forms for kids to play on, but the smooth angled surfaces ultimately attracted skateboarders and graffiti taggers. A shabbiness encroached. The Friends of Scuffletown Park, chaired by Joyce Stargardt, in 1999 brought together a group to reclaim the park as a community oasis. Beverly Lacy of the Fan District Association organized and coordinated the team’s year-and-a-half effort.
Most of the larger concrete forms were broken up to provide more room for grass and landscaping. Albert Grappone, of the longtime Richmond stone-cutting family, donated the park’s granite sign.
The funds to complete the work came from a variety of people and organizations, including from then-Councilman Tim Kaine’s Second District Discretionary Fund. A celebration opening featured the music of the band Big City and a round of “Happy Birthday” for Grace Gable, turning 6.
Ever since, the park has served the greater community as a place to gather, lunch, read, strum guitars, parade pets, garden and admire the progress of a day’s hours and the changes of season.
