A stroll down certain streets in Richmond and its surroundings may bring you in contact with more history than meets the eye. Here’s an overview of several notable blocks that represent pieces of our region’s story.
The Temple of Democracy
Capitol Square, Ninth and Grace streets
Thomas Jefferson’s 1785-92 design of the Virginia State Capitol reintroduced Greco-Roman temple architecture for public and democratic purposes. The design has ever since influenced columned buildings on hillsides, from campuses to McMansions. The Capitol underwent reconstruction after a packed 1870 court proceeding caused a balcony collapse, and the wings and Jefferson’s idea of front steps were added in 1905-06.
The rolling parkland of Capitol Square wasn’t always pleasant enough of a place to take lunch; pigs once rooted here, and Confederate troops used it as a drilling field. In 1865, occupying Federal soldiers camped there.
Maximilian Godefroy in 1816 directed the first formal landscaping of the square, followed in 1850 by John Notman. The Capitol building and grounds underwent extensive renovations during 2004-07, placing a visitor center inside the hill.
The Virginia Executive Mansion, designed by Alexander Parris in 1813, is the nation’s oldest governor’s residence in continuous use. Capitol Square contains several statues commemorating the state’s past, including the Civil Rights Memorial (2008), Sidney Bleifeld’s final public commission; Charles Rudy’s Edgar Allan Poe (1956); and an equestrian Washington by Thomas Crawford (1858). The brick Bell Tower (1825) today houses the Virginia Capitol Foundation and the Capitol Square Preservation Council . Elijah Myers designed the grey stone High Gothic Revival Old City Hall, constructed by day labor during 1886-96. The city vacated the building around 1970, but preservationists prevented the demolition for its present office use. The General Assembly building at the northwestern end of the square is currently undergoing a massive makeover.
Tours of the Virginia State Capitol are available. Call 804-698-1788 or visit virginiacapitol.gov.
A Street of Their Own
‘Quality Row’ in Jackson Ward, 100 block of East Leigh Street
In Jim Crow-era racially divided Richmond, the majority-black enclave of Jackson Ward thrived as an entity independent of white Richmond, and “Quality Row” was the desirable address for the black professional class. At 102 E. Leigh lived Dr. J.J. Smallwood, a Virginia Union University professor and civil rights advocate, while 104 was home to James H. Johnson, president of Virginia State College in Petersburg. For a time in the late 1950s, 118 provided offices for civil rights attorneys Oliver Hill, Martin C. Martin and James R. Olphin.
Maggie Lena Walker, the best-known Quality Row resident, a businessperson, pioneering banker and community organizer, lived at 100 1/2 E. Leigh St. with up to 13 people — extended family and servants — from 1905 until her 1934 death.
Walker acquired the house in 1904 for $4,800. Her name alone is on the deed, and she used her own money to buy it. She hired Charles T. Russell, the state’s first licensed black architect, to add 12 rooms, along with the columned front porch and a second-story balcony (open until 1924). By 1928, the house totaled 28 rooms. The Walker family occupied the house until the 1970s, when it came to the National Park Service with most of its original furnishings.
Jackson Ward is a National Historic Landmark District, the largest in the country devoted to African-American history. A statue commemorating the life and legacy of Maggie L. Walker was installed at Brook Road and Broad Street in 2017.
Carrington Row
Brought Back to Life
The Pilot Block in Church Hill, 2300 E. Broad St.
By the early 1950s, Church Hill, a largely 19th-century neighborhood built to distinction by the middle and upper classes, bore the weight of age and neglect. In 1957, the Historic Richmond Foundation acted to staunch the decline with its Pilot Block Project, designed not only to encourage rehabilitation of these century-plus-old residences but also to demonstrate how such group renovations could be done. The section bounded by 23rd, 24th, Broad and Grace streets enjoyed not only full restoration inside 10 years, but also the landscaped creation by the Garden Club of Virginia, within the stone alley running through the block, of the “St. John’s Mews.”
The centerpiece of the block is the oldest surviving set of row houses in Richmond, the neoclassical revival “Carrington Row,” of 2307-2309 and 2011 E. Broad. The Adams and Carringtons owned most of Richmond’s East End during the 19th century, and these houses were built in 1818 for the three sons of Ann Adams Carrington.
The Greek Revival townhouse at 2300 is a wedding present; built in 1850 by brickyard owner William Caitlin for Rebecca, his third wife. This was the original venue for the 2300 Club (hence its name), and today it forms the central part of Patrick Henry’s Pub and Grille.
The Hazen house, 2076 Buford Road
A Lovely Lane
Buford Road in Bon Air, Chesterfield County, 1600-2300 blocks
For late 19th- and early 20th-century Richmonders of means, or those looking for a fun night out during the summer, the resort community of Bon Air provided an escape from hot and crowded city streets. From 1877, the village grew with the large residences and cottages of both permanent and summer residents.
Along Buford Road and its tributary streets is an assortment of Queen Anne, Colonial Revival, bungalow, stick and American foursquare styles in various sizes.
One centerpiece structure is long gone. During the 1880s at Buford and Rockaway roads stood the 36-room Bon Air Hotel, surrounded by meticulous grounds that included bicycle trails, bridle paths, croquet pitches, an open-air dance pavilion, a bowling alley, a billiard room and a saloon. A fire destroyed the hotel in 1889, leaving the gallery-porched annex, now apartments.
The 1882 wood-frame and weather-boarded Victorian Gothic church building at 2071 Buford that first opened as a nondenominational house of worship later became Bon Air Presbyterian and is currently Bon Air Christian Church.
At 2076 is the house first occupied by James K. Hazen — namesake for the nearby granite and gable-pointed Victorian Romanesque building that served as Chesterfield’s first public library until 1975 — acquired and recently restored for community use after decades of vacancy.
All the Train Songs
North and South Center Street, Ashland
Since its completion in 1922, the Duncan Lee-designed Dutch Colonial-style Ashland Station at 101 N. Center St. has provided residents of the town a link to the greater world. Ashland was born from both the Richmond, Fredericksburg and Potomac Railway, which started selling lots there in 1854 for summer homes, and Randolph-Macon College, which moved there in 1868. Today, Amtrak passengers get a glimpse of a unique American townscape: an active town with tracks running through the middle, and, along Center Street, big-columned houses and bungalows, wraparound porches, and carpenters’ filigree, displayed in styles from Italianate and Second Empire to Eastlake, Queen Anne and Colonial Revival.
At 104 N. Center St. is the Beaux Arts Hanover Bank (1919). The pedimented portico of the Hanover Arts & Activities Center, 500 S. Center, was built in 1858 and until 1969 served as the Ashland Baptist Church. The only Greek Revival house on the street, at 700 South, is the MacMurdo house, built in 1858 by railway clerk C.W. MacMurdo. In December, the Commonwealth Transportation Board endorsed the “3-2-3” option for Ashland, in which three tracks narrow to two through downtown as part of DC2RVA, a federal rail project that should eventually run between Washington and Richmond.
Origin Story
Shockoe, blocks of 1500-1700 E. Main, 15th and 17th streets, 1500-1700 blocks of E. Franklin St.
The Shockoe Valley, or “The Bottom,” as the nickname entered city parlance during the late 1970s, is Richmond’s cradle. The city’s economy grew to maturity here, from the early established First (today’s 17th Street Farmers) Market, which is presently undergoing its seventh reorientation since 1792, due for completion this spring.
In the 19th century, tobacco processing plants (now condos and apartments) lined East Main, and the busy Richmond Docks flanked the James River & Kanawha Canal. Here, too, was headquartered one of the city’s largest economic engines: slave markets and auction houses.
These blocks bustled until the Civil War with the buying, selling and transport of human beings. From 1830-65, an estimated 350,000 people were sold as slaves in Shockoe. After the Evacuation Fire in April 1865 that destroyed the business district, and the subsequent rebuilding of this area, most reminders of the slave trade were buried under parking lots and highway ramps.
The 1998 Richmond Slave Trail Commission began marking sites, and the Defenders for Freedom, Justice & Equality and its Sacred Ground Historical Reclamation Project envisioned a fitting memorial for the history. This work has centered around the Richmond African Burial Ground of 1750-1816, uncovered from asphalt, and the 2008 archaeological find of the notorious slave jail of Robert Lumpkin.
The Inexorable Exurb
Short Pump, 11800 W. Broad St. and environs
The story is murky. The name for the western Henrico crossroads first appears on an 1853 map. A Revolutionary War veteran built his tavern around 1817 at Three Notched (Three Chopt) Road and Deep Run Turnpike (Broad Street Road). His tavern’s watering pump either had a lower than usual handle, or was cut off, or “Short Pump” referred to the variable water pressure. The sagging tavern remnants were razed in 1938 for road improvements. The three remaining outposts of the rural crossroads were pulled from their foundations in 1996.
Henley’s, a country store from around 1922, was at Broad and Three Chopt and later became an antique store called The Hitching Post. The Short Pump Garage opened in 1926 at Broad and Pouncey Tract Road and evolved into Short Pump Transmission. The Short Pump Grocery opened in 1938; it turned into a rowdy bar, then reverted to its original purpose and served barbecue to workers constructing the suburbia soon to end its days.
The buildings stood in the way of a state road widening project, extending up to what in 2003 became the front of the Short Pump Town Center mall. But before that, the Pruitt family, landowners and developers of this area, chose to move the buildings to an exhibition village in Goochland County, site of the annual Field Day of the Past.
VCU's Founders Hall
From Extravagance to Landmark Expedience
West Franklin Street, 800-1100 blocks
During the late 19th and early 20th centuries, this was Richmond’s Fifth Avenue. The wealthy families who designed these places moved away within less than a half century to enclaves west and south, leaving their many-roomed mansions behind to become apartments or boarding houses. And then in the 1920s, an upstart city-based college, which came to be known as Richmond Professional Institute, started seeking places for its social work and arts classes and offices. One of its first acquisitions was 827 — a massive, mansard-roofed Second Empire pile built in 1883 for tobacco factory equipment wholesaler E.A. Saunders — today’s Founders Hall.
After the 1968 merger with the Medical College of Virginia created Virginia Commonwealth University, the growing institution needed even more space. Lou Saksen was VCU’s chief planner during 1974-86, a significant and tumultuous period of building. When possible, he steered the school toward adapting existing structures.
The 800-1100 blocks became a national historic district in 1972. Monroe Park provided a leafy portal into this world of Second Empire, Queen Anne, Jacobean, Romanesque and Colonial Revival styles.
The seven stories of the Chesterfield Apartments, at 900, made it the city’s first high-rise residential building in 1902. Its tearoom space is the longest-running restaurant venue in the city.
Tredegar Iron Works
Industry, and History, on the Rapids
Tredegar Street, 300-500 blocks and environs
At the riverside Tredegar Iron Works site is the welcome center of the Richmond National Battlefield Parks division of the National Park Service and the American Civil War Museum; the latter merged in 2013 with the Museum of the Confederacy. The museum is amid construction of a 28,500-square-foot expansion, with completion to occur late in 2018 or early 2019.
Tredegar is one of the most important locations in Southern industrial history due to its armaments role during the Civil War. The remaining buildings are but a fraction of a massive complex that employed thousands and operated here from 1837-1952. Ethyl Corporation saved the remnants of the site from ruination in the 1970s, and The Valentine tried an industrial museum there during 1994-95 that didn’t work but brought life back to the neglected riverfront.
Nearby is the Belle Isle Pedestrian Bridge, running 1,040 feet beneath Lee Bridge, which since 1991 has offered expansive views of the rapids and city. Belle Isle is a site layered by history and industry; during the Civil War, its name became oxymoronic due to a notorious and deadly prison camp for Union captives, followed by more industry and a Virginia Electric and Power Company hydroelectric plant. Since 1972, the island has been the keystone of the James River Park System.
