Hospitals to Hospitality

I entered the world in the club room, between the pool table and the piano.

At least, that’s what blueprints seemed to reveal when shown to me by a resident of the Ginter Place condominiums during a pilgrimage I made to my birthplace — what was then the 7-year-old Richmond Memorial Hospital. Although no historical plaque yet touts the location as the site of my nativity, the conversion of the birthing room into a hub for social activity seems entirely in keeping with my mature interests.

This was but one spot in my exploration of five former city medical facilities transformed into living spaces.

‘A Church or Hospital on Every Corner’ 

During the late 19th and early 20th centuries, several privately run medical centers operated in downtown Richmond — among them Grace Hospital — their proliferation inspired in part by Richmond’s medical schools and associations.

The fractious medical community at the time was another impetus for hospital building, according to Dr. Charles M. Caravati in “Medicine in Richmond 1900-1975.” Caravati quotes E. Randolph Trice, a retired physician and former curator for the Richmond Academy of Medicine: “When one surgeon could not get along with another, he’d start his own hospital. So, Dr. Hunter McGuire started St. Luke’s. Dr. George Ben Johnston started Johnston-Willis. Dr. Shelton Horsely started St. Elizabeth’s. They say in Richmond, 100 years ago, there was a church or hospital on every corner.”

Further, race and class played significant roles in dividing care. The Virginia constitution that went into effect on July 10, 1902, forbade Black and white people from sharing public spaces, which extended into medical care (and cemeteries, but that’s a different story).

Months before, in February 1902, physician Miles Berkley Jones and his wife, Sarah Garland Boyd Jones, the first licensed Black female doctor in Virginia, both Howard University graduates, founded the Medical and Chirurgical Society at their home and office in Jackson Ward, which had been gerrymandered by the city to become majority Black. From this beginning evolved Richmond Community Hospital on Overbrook Road (see Page 82 for details). Similarly, in 1920 the Medical College of Virginia opened St. Philip’s Hospital and an associated nursing school for Black people, which functioned until 1962.

Of these examples, St. Luke’s outgrew its original building and moved to a building at Harrison and Grace streets that was in 1976 swept away by a grocery store and parking lot. St. Elizabeth’s, which functioned from 1911 to 1978 at Pine and Grace streets, was replaced by parking lots.

However, Grace Hospital and the second Johnston-Willis hospital building are among several that, like Richmond Memorial, survive around the city with renewed leases on life.

Johnston-Willis Hospital, 2900 Kensington Ave. 

Now: Kensington Court Apartments

Operation: 1923-1980; relocated to Chesterfield as part of the HCA Virginia Health System

Architect: Marcellus E. Wright Sr. (1881-1962)

Construction: 1922-1923. Wright also designed the 1928 Nurses Home

Conversion: Robin Miller and Associates and contractor W.M. Jordan, 2000

Two well-regarded Richmond physicians who garnered national reputations, George Ben Johnston and his protege Achille Murat Willis, combined their talents in 1909 to organize the 55-bed Johnston-Willis Sanitorium. They moved into the William C. Allen mansion on the southeast corner of Sixth and East Franklin streets.

Johnston suffered ill health and died in 1914 of an apparent heart attack. Willis continued on and moved to the purpose-built hospital on Kensington Avenue that retained the name of his mentor in memoriam. The medical center opened with 128 beds and later added 200 more. Like most private hospitals at the time, Johnston-Willis included its own nursing school.

Murat, who also taught at the Medical College of Virginia, initiated a dispute about the college’s administration and practices. The feud preoccupied and apparently depressed him. On Jan. 3, 1929, after completing a successful surgery at the hospital, Willis took his own life. His death shocked the community and prompted tributes from medical professionals and those whose lives he had saved.

The hospital moved on with new management and modernization. In February 1969, the Nashville-based Hospital Corporation of America absorbed Johnston-Willis Hospital, making it “the first Richmond hospital to divest itself of private ownership and become part of a business complex,” according to Caravati. In 1980, it moved to Chesterfield County.

The hospital’s former building went through incarnations as a senior home and a poorly managed adult care residence before being converted to apartments in 2000.

Grace Hospital, 401 W. Grace St. 

Now: Grace and Monroe Apartments

Operation: 1911-1978

Architect: Charles M. Robinson; additions by Henry E. Baskervill, 1930, and Samuel N. Mayo, 1964

Conversion: 2004

Prolific architect Charles M. Robinson (of today’s Altria Theatre and other Virginia landmarks) designed Grace Hospital, the city’s first fireproof hospital, during the early years of his busy Richmond practice. The dignified Colonial Revival entrance, with a columned three-story portico reached by twin stairways, complemented nearby city mansions and institutions. A later Monroe Street side entry served as an emergency entrance, the words “Grace Hospital” chiseled above the door. Directed by Drs. Robert C. Bryan and Stuart MacLean, Grace originally provided for only 47 patients, but that grew to 150.

As in every establishment of its kind, many lives came and went at Grace. James Dooley — who, with his wife, Sallie May, owned Maymont and bequeathed the estate to the city for a park — died there in 1922, and Donnie Corker, who grew up to become the loud, proud and often cross-dressing “Dirtwoman,” was born there in 1951.

On Oct. 15, 1954, Lakeside couple Martha and William Thorne welcomed their first child at Grace during a blackout caused by Hurricane Hazel. When the anxious father asked the newborn’s sex, the physician retorted, “How the hell should I know? It was dark in there.”

A decade later, on Feb. 9, 1965, an unknown woman abandoned an infant who needed eye surgery at the hospital. She grew up to become Kimberly Smith, and her story was featured in a 2002 episode of “Unsolved Mysteries.”

In 1978, Grace Hospital and nearby St. Elizabeth’s merged to form Richmond Metropolitan Hospital at Pine and Grace, which lasted into the 1990s; the site is now home to Virginia Commonwealth University’s honors college and dormitories.

The Grace Hospital building was transformed into the Chamblin Memorial Home for Adults (1981-1990) and then Grace Home but stood vacant after 1999. In February 2004, developers converted it into apartments.

Richmond Memorial, 1350 Westwood Ave. 

Now: Ginter Place condominiums

Operation: 1958-1998; absorbed and moved to the Bon Secours Memorial Regional Medical Center, Hanover County

Architects: Baskervill & Son (1957) and Samuel Hannaford & Sons; Baskervill also designed the nursing school addition (1961) and another for Sheltering Arms Hospital (1965).

Conversion: Commonwealth Architects, 2008

Despite the many hospitals in Richmond, a study done after World War II determined that there was a shortage of hospital beds; the bed occupancy rate had reached 91.3%, well above the national average of 70%. Further, returning veterans who used the GI Bill to accomplish their medical training found few opportunities to practice here due to the lack of a large and open staff facility.

The Richmond Community Council appointed theologian and First Baptist Church leader Theodore H. Adams to head a five-man steering committee to resolve the issues. That body included banker and civic leader Harry H. Augustine, investment banker and philanthropist Buford Scott, and Richmond newspaper publisher D. Tennant Bryan.

Around the same time, parents representing 984 sons and daughters killed during WWII approached the committee concerning a permanent commemoration of their children’s sacrifice. The group saw an opportunity to add an urgently needed medical center open to all, for whatever they were able to pay, that could be integrated with a fitting memorial. The March 9, 1946, Richmond Times-Dispatch editorialized, “It is agreed on every side that we must have a community hospital open to all races and creeds, and to qualified white and Negro practitioners.”

The Bryan family donated property for the construction, including their family home through four generations, the 1908 Colonial Revival country estate called Laburnum. However, building the hospital took time and money — about $5 million raised from community donations, grants and the city. Fundraising complications and the Korean War delayed construction of the 356-bed hospital until 1954.

Richmond Memorial’s austere modernist design came from the drafting tables of Richmond’s Baskervill & Son in partnership with the Cincinnati architects Samuel Hannaford & Sons, who were known for municipal buildings and hospitals. Esteemed landscape designer Charles Gillette planned the grounds.

They created a sleek entrance lobby with a midcentury modern vibe. It housed twin marble stairs leading to a five-story tower and a memorial chapel, where the names of the war dead were inscribed on a tablet of Italian marble and illuminated by daylight filtered through translucent windows. The estate home, Laburnum, provided a medical records library and rooms for resident physicians; its wine cellar became the nurses’ lounge.

In 1965, Sheltering Arms Physical Rehabilitation Hospital moved from East Clay Street to the Palmyra Avenue side of the campus. But with the 1998 opening of the $61 million Bon Secours Memorial Regional Medical Center, Richmond Memorial turned into an outpatient and administrative support facility for the Bon Secours system. Sheltering Arms relocated, and another health provider moved in.

The Richmond Memorial Hospital Foundation gave a grant for the transfer of the “Roll of Honor” tablet to a courtyard garden at the new location. Markers were installed honoring those who served in the Korean and Vietnam wars. A decade later, in 2000, the Richmond Lutheran Home purchased the former site for a retirement home but soon went bankrupt.

Six businessmen came together to bankroll the conversion of the hospital to a luxury condominium building, including Ed Gaskin and James E. Ukrop, then chairman of Ukrop’s Supermarkets and First Market Bank, and his son, Ted. The luxe detailing of the two- and three-bedroom units includes glass doorknobs, crown molding running around 9-foot ceilings, balconies on the upper levels and private patios on the ground floor. “It’s a contemporary living unit inside an historic envelope,” Gaskin told the Richmond Times-Dispatch. To get there, he said, the removal of 500 dumpster loads of material stripped the building to its core.

Price House/Tucker Sanatorium/Tucker Hospital, 212 W. Franklin St. 

Now: Presidential Court Condos

Operation: 1916-1976. Renamed Tucker Pavilion and merged with Chippenham Hospital, 7101 Jahnke Road

Architectural notes: Center house built c. 1805, with subsequent expansions and alterations

Conversion: New York-based Goodstein Development Corp., 2005

From 1803 to 1805, Revolutionary War officer Major William Price built a house on a quarter-block lot of farmland at what was then the western edge of Richmond. The fifth U.S. president, James Monroe, lived in the house in 1829 while presiding over Virginia’s Constitutional Convention. Subsequent owners, including Civil War veteran, lawyer and philanthropist James Dooley, added a wing, altered the style and refined the decor.

Richmond physician Beverley Randolph Tucker bought the Price House from the Dooleys in 1916 as a home for his clinic for “nervous disorders,” Tucker Sanatorium. He lengthened the facade, built a privacy wall and added two additional wings, while expanding into the circa 1870 A.S. Smith house. Later expansions encompassed the 1875 Ida Schoolcraft House at 200 W. Franklin St. and spaces in the circa 1805 Cole Digges House at 204 W. Franklin St., which is now headquarters for Preservation Virginia.

By 1976, the hospital required more space and contemporary facilities. Two years later, the Price and Smith houses were again remodeled for use as the Dooley Madison Home, an assisted living facility. Management of the facility changed hands, conditions devolved, and by 2003 a team of state and local agencies closed the home for violating codes and standards of care.

The single ownership of the collection of buildings on the 200 block of West Franklin allowed Historic Richmond Foundation to guide their preservation. The New York-based Goodstein Development Co. acquired the former Tucker complex in 2005 for conversion into a 27-unit luxury condominium building.

Stuart Circle Hospital, 413-421 (former) Stuart Circle

Now: One Monument Avenue

Operation: 1913-1999; relocated as the Bon Secours-Stuart Circle Hospital, 8580 Magellan Parkway

Architect: Charles M. Robinson, 1913; additions in 1919, 1978

Conversion: Commonwealth Architects, 2000

A visit to Stuart Circle Hospital felt like a trip to one’s grandparents’ house. The lobby’s wingback chairs, photographs and portraits on the walls were comforting, and the exuberant exterior was welcoming and, yes, hospitable.

Richmond-based Charles M. Robinson designed the hospital’s curved facade to follow the confluence of Lombardy and West Franklin streets. Architectural writer Edwin Slipek Jr. noted, “The hospital was constructed with marble and tile floors, high ceilings and large stairways to allow for more natural light.” 

The hospital was opened by seven Richmond doctors led by Lewis C. Bosher. Stuart Circle trained nurses from 1914 to 1975, some of whom lived next door in the West Avenue apartments. After 1928, the program became affiliated with the Richmond Professional Institute and later VCU.

An era ended — and much consternation ensued — when Bon Secours closed the hospital in 1999. Not only was the hospital’s move to western Chesterfield initially opposed, but neighborhood associations and city officials raised concerns about converting the building to other uses, particularly because Richmond Memorial, closed two years prior, remained mostly empty.

The building, successfully converted to a mixed-use facility with condominiums and several professional offices and renamed One Monument, retains a sense of familiarity. The remade complex offers a spacious courtyard, a small garden grove space, and a private terrace with a unique view of the neighborhood and nearby architectural landmarks.

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A Community’s Hospital

A long-neglected building represents both history and opportunity

Richmond Community Hospital, at 1209 Overbrook Road, served the city’s Black community for nearly 50 years, from 1932 to 1980. Its roots, however, date back to 1902, when Black doctors Miles Berkley Jones and Sarah Garland Boyd Jones — the first woman to pass the Virginia medical board exam — founded the Medical and Chirurgical Society at their home and office in Jackson Ward. They opened a 25-bed hospital and nursing school in 1903 and, although Sarah died in 1905, Miles led the years-long fundraising effort for the Sarah G. Jones Memorial Hospital, Medical College and Training School, which opened on Overbrook Road in 1932. After 1945, it was known as Richmond Community Hospital.

A group of Black physicians relocated the hospital to a modern facility in Church Hill in 1980, which was acquired by the Bon Secours system in 1995. The Overbrook Road building was transferred to Virginia Union University, a historically Black institution neighboring the site. After briefly serving as student housing, the former hospital has stood unused, even though another university building was rehabilitated through a combination of grants and state historic tax credits.

In February 2024, the university announced a $40 million deal to build affordable housing on university-owned land, including the site of the derelict RCH. According to a VUU statement, the deal is part of a $500 million, 10-year plan to update the campus.

The public reacted immediately, a group formed to save RCH, and Preservation Virginia earmarked the building as one of the state’s most endangered. Many emphasized RCH’s connection to the nearby Frederick Douglass Court, a middle-class, primarily Black neighborhood where both VUU professors and RCH physicians and nurses lived.

During an Aug. 9 public meeting at VUU, the developer’s representatives, VUU officials and concerned citizens engaged in often heated discussion. Projections of the proposed mixed-use building showed the RCH building cut in half and essentially reduced to its facade.

Whether this is the end of the matter or the beginning of a longer community engagement process remains to be seen.

New Life for Old Bones

Supporting historic preservation adds to the bottom line

Without historic tax credits, “Richmond would look nothing like it does now. A lot of people don’t realize that and don’t give the program credit,” says Julie Langan, historic preservation officer for the Virginia Department of Historic Resources. Projects supported by the Historic Rehabilitation Tax Credit have changed neighborhoods and led to the adaptive reuse — repurposing old structures for new purposes — of many types of buildings, including former hospitals, churches and warehouses. “And people may not know we have the best historic tax credit program in the country,” Langan adds. “We’re really fortunate.”

HRTC may have “history” in its name, but the program is intended to maintain viable communities for the future by offering financial tools that can be paired with easements granting preservation rights to rescue and renew antique buildings. The effort often requires partnerships between community groups, state agencies and government leaders.

According to a 2023 economic impact study by Virginia Commonwealth University’s Wilder School Center for Public Policy, the HRTC program incentivizes the preservation and reuse of historic buildings by reimbursing a portion — currently 25% — of eligible expenses as tax credits, which project investors can use to reduce their tax liability for up to 10 years. A federal historic tax credit program offers an additional 20% in credits for eligible projects, according to Langan. Currently, however, federal credits can only be applied to income-generating businesses, such as stores, offices and apartments, not private residences.

Since the HRTC program was established in 1997, the study details, $6.8 billion has been privately invested in more than 3,000 rehabilitation projects across the commonwealth at a cost of $1.7 billion in tax credits. In Richmond over the past 10 years, according to Langan, $1.2 billion in eligible expenses have been invested in 546 completed tax credit projects.

During the VCU study period of 2015 to 2020, 100-plus historic rehabilitation projects were completed each year statewide, supporting nearly 19,000 jobs, paying more than $80 million in state and local taxes, and resulting in $4.1 billion in economic activity. Moreover, the economic benefits from completed projects are ongoing, contributing more than $1.8 billion each year to Virginia economic activity, boosting gross state product by $1.2 billion and supporting over 10,000 jobs.

Beyond the financial advantages of the program, the VCU study found social benefits to rehabilitating historic buildings with tax credits, including preserving Virginia’s unique cultural heritage, enhancing its appeal as a tourist destination, reducing sprawl and thereby preserving natural areas, creating affordable housing, and ultimately inspiring the revitalization of surrounding areas.