Thomas Jefferson proposed a state-supported university during his term as governor in 1779 and repeatedly returned to the subject over the following decades. Not until after his presidency (1801–1809) did he accomplish the goal. Beginning with a scheme for an...
This section includes the city of Richmond and the adjacent metropolitan area of Henrico County as well as a portion of Hanover County. The 2000 census recorded 197,790 residents for the city and about 1 million in the metropolitan area.
Europeans discovered...
Capitol Square has been the government center of Richmond since Thomas Jefferson selected the site and laid out the square in 1780. Initially the square was occupied by Jefferson's capitol building and the Virginia Executive Mansion. Over time the Commonwealth of...
Court End originally referred to a residential neighborhood on Shockoe Hill, chiefly north of the capitol, which included churches along Broad Street. Today it includes only the area bounded by East Broad Street on the south, I-95...
The Shockoe Valley (or Shockoe Bottom) area is the oldest section of Richmond. The name of the area comes from Shockoe (sometimes spelled Shacco, from a Native American word referring to a large flat rock) Creek, which flowed into the James River at the uppermost point of...
The western part of this area, named for St. John's Church and known by that name and as Richmond Hill, dates from the original layout of Richmond in 1737. William Byrd donated two lots for Henrico Parish Church, but their initially inaccessible location on the highest point in...
Richmond's past prominence as a port is still apparent in the name of one of its historic warehouse districts, Shockoe Slip. The actual slip no longer exists, but the handsome brick warehouses with iron details and storefronts remain. The area between East Main Street and...
The north bank of the James River, from the Mayo (14th Street) Bridge to the Robert E. Lee Bridge at Belvidere Street, is traditionally considered to be the area where the English first came ashore at the falls in 1607. Today a monumental bronze cross, mounted on a base...
Since the late eighteenth century, East Main Street, which slopes gently uphill and westward from Shockoe Bottom, has been a continuously prosperous commercial and financial center. After being mostly destroyed by the devastating evacuation fire in April 1865 (when fleeing...
Once referred to as Richmond's “Fifth Avenue,” Grace Street in the nineteenth century was a quiet residential area that started at Capitol Square and extended west to the edge of the city. A few Victorian houses survive behind shopfront additions, but the predominant character...
The origins of Broad Street lie in Thomas Jefferson's 1780 expansion plan for Richmond, in which the street was laid out to the present Foushee Street (the original western boundary of the city). Subsequently, the city grid expanded...
Jackson Ward is one of the oldest neighborhoods in Richmond and the only one of the large downtown residential neighborhoods to survive. It is bounded on the south by Marshall Street, on the west by Belvidere Street, on the east by 4th Street, and on the north by the Gilpin...
The Shockoe Hill Cemetery area is at the northern terminus of Shockoe Hill, which drops precipitously to Bacons Quarter Branch Valley. For many years this formed the northern boundary of Richmond. Away from the commercial and residential development along the...
Oregon Hill is a nineteenth-century working-class neighborhood that retains its original character and all of its component parts: residential streetscapes, churches, commercial buildings, and schools. The origins of Oregon Hill go back to c. 1750, when William Byrd III built...
Monroe Park, bounded by West Franklin, Laurel, West Main, and Belvidere streets, is a handsome urban oasis with a leafy canopy of huge trees. It is surrounded by some of the city's most eclectic buildings and serves as green space for landlocked Virginia...
From Monroe Park westward to where it becomes Monument Avenue, Franklin Street provides a timeline of fashionable Richmond's houses and churches in an array of styles—from Italianate and Second Empire to Richardsonian Romanesque...
The Fan District (bounded by Broad Street to the north, the Boulevard to west, Belvidere Street to the east, and Cary Street to the south) is one of Richmond's most famous neighborhoods. Historian Drew St. J. Carneal points out that the name dates from the mid-twentieth...
The heart of the Fan is the area south of Monument Avenue between Monroe Park and the Boulevard. The shape of this section—comparatively narrow at the east end and widening toward the west—gave the Fan its name in the 1950s. The streets are lined with...
The cultural acropolis of Richmond, the Boulevard had its origins in the plan of the Fan district. In the 1880s the Commonwealth of Virginia acquired a tract of land for a Confederate veterans' home, to be known as the R. E. Lee Camp. In 1891 city engineer Wilfred Emory...
West of the Boulevard is a large, early twentieth-century residential neighborhood defined here as the blocks between Boulevard and Thompson and between Monument Avenue and Cary Street. Remarkably cohesive and well preserved, the West of the Boulevard area grew during...
Ginter Park, bounded by Brook Road on the west, Moss Side Avenue on the east, North and Bellevue avenues on the north, and Brookland Park Boulevard on the south, is a turn-of-thetwentieth-century suburb that briefly became a separate town before it...
These Southside suburbs form a necklace of distinct neighborhoods along Riverside Drive to the north, Semmes and Forest Hill avenues to the south, and Forest Hill Park in the center. During most of the nineteenth...
This tour includes the western section of Henrico County, from the western edge of Richmond west to Goochland County, with the James River on the south and U.S. 250 (Broad Street Road) on the north. The area, which was settled before Richmond was founded, is generally...
Metropolitan Richmond in the northern part of Henrico County and the southern portion of Hanover County represents a sharp contrast between intense commercial and suburban development around U.S. 250, U.S. 1, I-95, and I-295 and adjacent rural areas. Once predominantly...
The eastern end of Henrico County is often known by its historic name, Varina. The name originally denoted a strain of tobacco cultivated by Native Americans, which John Rolfe, a superb marketer, introduced in England. Varina contains some of the county's most significant...
Located fifty miles south of Washington, D.C., on the fall line of the Rappahannock River, Fredericksburg, since its establishment in the 1720s, has been an important commercial junction for river traffic (steamboats lasted until the 1940s), turnpikes, railroads...
The boulevard memorializes George Washington's mother, Mary Ball Washington; its original name was Mary Washington Avenue. When she died in 1789, she was buried at her request on Kenmore's grounds, on a site that would later be adjacent to Washington Avenue....
This area lay outside the original city boundaries, and in 1749 Roger Dixon purchased the land and subdivided it. Dixon ran into financial problems and tried a lottery, as well as building at least one house on speculation. The site of a ferry landing,...
Around Fredericksburg and along the I-95 corridor has grown up a mini-metropolitan area in the counties of Stafford, across the Rappahannock River, and Spotsylvania, south of Fredericksburg. Although Stafford County in many ways retains a rural ambience,...
The land lying between the Potomac River on the north, Chesapeake Bay on the east, the James River on the south, and the fall line on the west is generally known as the Peninsulas. The area includes the Northern Neck (or Northern, or Upper Peninsula), the Middle Peninsula, and...
