The Hermitage was a 600-acre country villa for Col. John Mayo Jr. and his wife, Abigail DeHart.
Col. John Mayo Jr., whose grandfather William laid out Richmond’s original plans for city founder William Byrd II, acquired lands west of the small municipality along the James River in 1781. The property, with 1791 additions, encompassed an area bounded on the south by meandering Westham Road (Park Avenue), present-day Hermitage Road on the east, the Old Coal Pit Road (near Interstate 95) on the west and today’s Bryan Park on the north.
Mayo and DeHart
Amid this 600-acre tract, Mayo established a country villa he dubbed “The Hermitage.” The estate began as a small cottage that expanded with rambling additions and reflected the growth of Mayo’s family with wife Abigail DeHart.
Mayo’s deliberate commute from his city house and business to what was then a country home went against the usual practice of Richmond’s thrifty merchants, who preferred living near their work. Mayo represented a generational shift with the upper class and possessed the means to escape the muddy and smelly cluster of town. His revenue stream derived in part from the operation of Mayo’s Toll Bridge (today the 14th Street Bridge). Mayo went on to represent Henrico County in the General Assembly, sit as a member of the Council of State in 1798 and serve during the War of 1812 as a lieutenant colonel of the 33rd Virginia Regiment.
Historian Samuel Mordecai refers to The Hermitage “as anything but a … point of seclusion; for there [first child Maria Mayo,] the reigning belle of the day, as well as other members of the family, attracted many visitors,” including suitors, whom Maria repeatedly refused, even young military up-and-comer Winfield Scott.
Industrialization and expansion chipped away at the Hermitage’s bucolic character. Prosperous coal mining in Goochland and Henrico counties caused the creation of the 1804 Richmond Turnpike, which cut across the lower portion of the Mayo land.
Mayo, perhaps thinking the much-added-on house no longer suited his elevated niche, bought the nearby Alexander Parris-designed Bellville estate, the building and furnishing of which had financially ruined owner John Bell. There, Maria finally agreed to marry Scott, who had become a hero in the War of 1812.
Mayo sold off pieces of The Hermitage property, though the house remained. “It is possible that Mayo used the house for quarters for his extensive slave holdings,” reflects National Park Service historian Mike Gorman in a monograph, “or that Mayo’s wife Abigail continued to use the house after John’s death in 1818. Whatever the uses, by 1835 the house was no longer a rural retreat,” since by then tracks for the Richmond, Fredericksburg and Potomac Railroad cut through the upper portion.
After Abigail died in 1843, The Hermitage stood derelict. It burned to the ground in 1857, but the estate’s dependencies — the kitchen, laundry, slave quarters and stables — were still standing when in 1859 the Virginia Central Agricultural Society purchased 50 acres of The Hermitage’s lands. The version of the state fair held there sought a larger and more accommodating situation than at its Monroe Park location.
This site of revelry gave way to other public displays. The increasing divisions in the country caused the 1860 transformation of the grounds into Camp Lee, named for Revolutionary War champion Henry “Light-Horse Harry” Lee, the father of Robert E. Lee. The encampment attracted considerable attention, and newspapers reported special trains for visiting civilians and ladies promenading in the exhibition hall to watch the martial drills and displays.
Camp Lee over time turned into a busy rear echelon military facility for the organization and training of Confederate troops. The sudden gathering of 5,000 men amid unsanitary conditions gave rise to the city’s first military hospital, which initially occupied the fair’s former exhibition and horticulture halls. Some 40 structures went up, none of them durable; only The Hermitage’s outbuildings survived. After the implementation of a compulsory draft, Camp Lee became a receiving center for conscripts and paroled prisoners and a place of execution for spies and deserters.
Following Richmond’s occupation, it became the headquarters and hospital for the Union’s XXIV Corps. Along with the thousands of men in blue came destitute refugees and among them former slaves, now free. They were housed in a crescent of 20 slapdash cabins named “Goree.” The Freedmen’s Bureau set up schools at Camp Lee for assisting hundreds of Black people in their transition from bondage to freedom.
By 1867, another transition remade Camp Lee into an entertainment resort with a horse track, beer garden, gaming parlor and pavilions for private parties. The “Goree” section remained, as did some of The Hermitage’s structures. However, all these amenities disappeared when the fair returned.
In 1916, the Hermitage Golf Club moved from the area of its historical namesake to a location on Hilliard Road.
After the turn of the century, a group of golf enthusiasts honored the antecedents of the location by naming their organization the Hermitage Golf Club, entering into a lease with Richmond Traction Co. for the property at the elbow of Hermitage Road and West Broad Street. In 1913, the RF&P railroad informed the club of a plan to build a major station on the property; the organization moved to Hilliard Road in 1916 as the Hermitage Country Club.
The great domed John Russell Pope Union or Broad Street Station, after varying delays, opened on Jan. 6, 1919, and became the region’s busiest rail center until the 1950s. Amtrak closed its urban stations nationally, and the last train left Broad Street on Nov. 15, 1975. The state, which owned the property and had little interest in maintaining the edifice, wanted to raze the station for office space.
Then came Roscoe Hughes, the head of the Virginia Academy of Sciences who, following a long and complicated statewide campaign, opened a nascent science museum in the former “Colored Waiting Room” of the station on Jan. 6, 1977. The 1970s recession helped in its way to save the building, creating the Science Museum of Virginia.
