Near West End

I was lucky enough to have a doctor’s appointment scheduled today for the new Bon Secours Heart Center building at Forest and Glenside. You know the one that towers over my neighborhood, Charles Glen. I got to take a sneak peek at the monster of a building that they’ve been working on for over a year. I am happy to say that while I couldn’t see my house from the 3rd floor, I did see my many neighbor’s houses, even those on my street.
When my dermatologist sent out a letter saying they were opening in the new building on May 5th, I was surprised because the building is still under construction.
The amount of glass that they used on the building makes for impressive views all around, of Glenside, Forest, and both the Fort Hill and Charles Glen neighborhoods. And despite the fact that I hate that the building is there at all, and it has made some of my neighbors move, I think they’ve done a good job with trying to make it look nice. Well, except that they need to provide a lot more landscape screening for our neighborhood. Actually, some of the houses in on Cornell Avenue feel like they are right in the parking lot of the new building.
There is a fountain on the Glenside/Forest side and also a large circular fountain on the side that faces the neighborhood as well. Inside, they’ve chosen mostly earth-tone colors and lots of marble. Photos are coming.

We’ve mentioned here before that Segway was going to start giving tours of Historic Richmond.  Well, I just found out that the new “Give Me Liberty Historic Segway Tours”  will begin departing at the Richmond Metropolitain Convention and Visitor’s Bureau Visitor Center starting on  May 17.

Here’s the scoop from Segway of Richmond’s Website:

The guided Segway tour is approximately 2.5 hours with a 15-minute lesson to make sure you’re safe and comfortable gliding around town. You’ll discover architectural features of downtown buildings.  Along the way, you’ll stop and see things you just can’t get to see by car. We can also design a personal tour just for you or your group. Just tell us where you like to begin,and we can arrange for local delivery/pick up for a nominal fee.

When: Tours begin daily,
7 days a week, at 10am
and 2pm.
Where: Meet at the Segway
of Richmond Store located
at 1301 East Cary St. in
Downtown Richmond. Tours
will begin at the Richmond Metro
Convention and Visitors Bureau.

Tickets: Tour tickets are
available at Segway of
Richmond or in advance
by calling 804.343.1850
Cost: $65 per person for a
2.5 Hour Tour.

WRIC reports:

University of Richmond officials have confirmed a suspect is in custody after a possible gunman was spotted on campus Tuesday.

Update:

They identified him as Seth A. Newman, 19, of the 1700 block of Chadwick Drive in Henrico County.

Chadwick Drive is just behind Cheswick Park in the Near West End.

[Via].

Update  May 8th from the Times-Dispatch:

A search warrant for the University of Richmond gun scare suspect’s home says he went into a campus library on Tuesday and told a worker there that he had heard people were having sex inside the building.

According to the warrant to search the home of Seth A. Newman, a UR library employee said the suspect was wearing a sheriff’s jacket “stated to her that he was a police officer, and that he had heard that people had been fornicating in the library and that he needed to spend the night.” The worker “asked for identification, he did not produce any, and then left the building.”

Also, the warrant - issued yesterday in Henrico County - states that a person matching the description of the UR suspect was seen leaving St. Joseph’s Home for the Aged at noon Tuesday, shortly before the incident at UR.

Newman, 19, appeared briefly in Richmond General District Court this morning.

I can’t believe it.  Style Weekly actually read my mind.  Now, I just have to hope that there are enough of us out here who believe that Richmond’s slave history needs to be told, commemorated and held sacred.  Style’s vision as Richmond as an Ellis Island to slaves is a new one to me.  Of course I’ve heard  of “being sold down river” and I know where that phrase came from. And I knew that Richmond was the slave-trading capital of the world, but still, having that image of millions of slaves sold at auction and the Slave Trail that I’ve walked actually being reversed was new to me.   I’ve always thought of the Africans who were brought here as slaves, when I’ve walked Richmond’s Slave Trail. It didn’t occur to me that many walked the opposite path.

Chris Dovi, did a great job with the article:

Like cattle, hundreds of thousands of men, women and children were herded from the bustling slave auctions of nearby Shockoe — the center of Virginia’s lucrative slave export market — and loaded onto boats for the long passage south. At one time, more than 10,000 souls passed through this port each month on their way to the misery of Deep South plantation slavery.

Prepping his line for another cast into the murky waters of the James River, Burison, who is black, says he’s a product of Richmond Public Schools. Now a successful professional — he has the look of a man who likes his jeans starched and pressed — with an education that took him far past Richmond’s closed classrooms, he says he didn’t even know about the Slave Trail until last year.

And it wasn’t until today that he knew its significance: As many as 10,000 men, women and children a month, up to 100,000 a year.

Burison’s smile vanishes. His moistened eyes stare for a long time across the river’s slow-moving waters. Words come slowly.

“Jesus,” he says, finally. “I think more people need to know that.”

Amen! 

Now, is Richmond ready to give up those tainted parking spots and do what is right? I hope so.

While Ellis Island is preserved, restored and interpreted for thousands of visitors who come each year seeking connection to their roots, Richmond’s history is capped off like a hazardous waste site.

Lumpkin’s, the old slave market at Cary and 15th streets, now provides monthly or daily parking rates for commuters. The old Negro burial ground — final resting place of an untold number of souls and perhaps of rebel slave leader Gabriel Prosser, who was hanged there — provides parking for VCU Medical Center staff. A historical marker for the site is down the block on Broad Street. Attempts by a local black history group to add signage at the lot have been rebuffed. Says one member of the group: “We were told the people who parked there complained that it made them uncomfortable to read about it.”

And then there’s Lumpkin’s Jail, a notorious slave holding pen and auction house known in its time as among the most brutish of the dozen such facilities in town. If Richmond was the central city of the country’s original sin, Lumpkin’s was, to many of the victims of that sin, the lowest rung of hell. Once called the “Devil’s Half Acre” by its victims, Lumpkin’s today is mostly covered by a city-owned parking lot.

To say that Richmond’s most valuable real estate is its downtown parking spaces may be the biggest understatement in Virginia history. Maybe even U.S. history.

“The fact that all of this is buried is sort of symbolic, I suppose,” Herring says. “But you never heal anything unless you confront it. We need to dig it up, rebuild it and show it to everybody — so that this city can finally come to terms with itself.”

A new expansion on an old arts contest means that children and adults with disablilties  will have a chance to enter and win in the National Arts Program® at Richmond. VSA arts of Virginia, with financial support from CVS/Caremark All Kids Can!^TM, and the city of Richmond Parks and Recreation department  will provide funding for new awards this year to recognize the talents of artists with disabilities in both the adult and youth divisions.

For a registration brochure , call 646-3674, or download one here.

            Anyone age 5 or older can submit artwork in The National Arts Program® at Richmond for a chance at winning cash prizes. Advance registration by June 4 is required, but there are no fees to participate and more than $3,000 in prize money will be awarded.

The exhibits will be open June 23 through July 18, and a reception, followed by an awards ceremony, and reception, featuring  entertainment provided by a band featuring musicians with disabilities, to be held at 7 p.m. on Sunday, June 29, at Science Museum of Virginia.  

Photo is from twitter.

Officials at the University of Richmond tonight say the area has been thoroughly searched and they do not believe a suspected armed man spotted in the library earlier today is on campus or in the neighborhood.

“Police feel the suspect has left the campus and the area,” said university spokesman Brian Eckert.

Authorities, however, are continuing their investigation while the school will reopen as scheduled Wednesday.

The university is asking employees, faculty and students to be vigilant and report any suspicious behavior. Also, Eckert said, there will be extra patrols overnight and tomorrow.

After first checking Boatwright Library, where the man was reported seen between 2:30 and 2:45 p.m., police inspected other buildings on the locked-down campus and the neighborhood, Richmond Police Chief Rodney Monroe said earlier tonight.

[via]

The Henrico County Extension Office continues its spring
lawn care seminar series  with a program on healthy lawns. The
seminar for the Near West End  is 7-8:30 p.m. Wednesday, May 14,  at the Tuckahoe Area Library, 1901 Starling Drive.

Building a Healthy Lawn will provide a variety of l
lawn-care information, including information on irrigation, fertilization, soil acidity
and weed control. Participants can also learn about SMART Lawns, a
seasonal, comprehensive program that teaches a step-by-step approach to
growing a healthy lawn. SMART Lawns teach environmentally
responsible practices, provides participants a plan tailored to fit
their specific lawn-care needs.

       The spring lawn care seminar series is free and open to the
public; however, participants should pre-register by calling  501-5160.

The Oaks, shown here late in the 1930s, was originally constructed in Amelia County, southwest of Richmond, perhaps in the mid eighteenth century. It was situated on land owned by Benjamin Harrison IV’ a descendant sold it to Daniel Jones in 1839. Early in the twentieth century, certain wealthy Richmond residents moved houses from the country to the city, hoping to thereby preserve them from abandonment or demolition. In 1930, the Oaks was moved to Windsor Farms, then a new development of colonial and English Style mansions. It is still there today. 

Caption from Historic Photos of Richmond by Emily and John Salmon.

I don’t talk about it much here, but one of my many other jobs is working at the Richmond Metro Convention & Visitor’s Bureau visitor’s center. There, I have the privilege of working with several women who know more about Richmond than I’ll ever know.  One in particular, Ann Thorne, is such an expert on Richmond history that she’s been known to teach the class that tour guides have to take in order to be educated enough to talk about Richmond’s long, detailed, and I might add confusing history.

When I found that we were working together last week, I took the opportunity to see if she’d take a peek at a book I’d just received, “Historic Photos of Richmond” by Emily and John Salmon.   I figured what better person to give an opinion on this book than a historian.  She said, even with the $39.95 price tag, she thought it was a  book she’d be happy to add to her collection. The reason she says this book is great is that so many of these photos have never been published before.  With the exception of about 15 out of the 200 photos, these are likely pictures of Richmond you’ve likely never seen.  Most are from the Library of Congress or the Library of Virginia archives.

Highlights include photos of  the unveiling of the Maury Monument, photos of the monuments on Monument Avenue surrounded by nothing but fields,  early photos of Richmond right after the Civil War from a Northerner’s perspective, the former Pratt’s Castle on Gamble’s Hill near Tredegar Iron Works, and a photo of a “contraband camp” of escaped slaves between Church Hill and the James River in 1865.

Yet another photo in the book I treasure is of the James River at Rocketts Landing, taken in 1865, showing the perspective believed to have inspired William Byrd II (Richmond’s founder) to name the town because it looked similar to Richmond-on-the-Thames in England.

Because the authors have good credentials — she is a senor copy editor in the Publications and Educational Services Division at the Library of Virginian  and co editor of The Hornbook Of Virginia History. He is a former archivist at the library of Virginia — the captions are details and accurate, save a few minor details.  Most of the photos are of the downtown area and captains focus on the architecture and weather the building has been demolished.

Authors Emily and John Salmon, will hold two book signings June 6th at 12:30 p.m. at Fountain Bookstore, and June 14th at  2 p.m.  at Barnes & Noble at Libbie Place in the Near West End.

The NASCAR Races are today and tomorrow.  So that means – avoid Laburnum Avenue and the Fairgrounds/Raceway area. Events run all day, both days, with the big races starting at 7:30 p.m.

The University of Richmond is trying to ease neighbors concerns about traffic of a proposed expansion to First Market Stadium, by agreeing to a timeline for road improvements, and trying to guide stadium traffic through entrances with the least neighborhood impact.  The proposed $25 million football stadium expansion, which would hold 8,700 people, will need a special use permit from the city.

John K. McCulla, coordinator of university relations, and other UR officials met last night with neighboring residents to brief them on the project.

After the meeting, McCulla said university officials are willing to improve UR Drive by the stadium’s opening in fall 2010 and to build a connecting road from Crenshaw Way to Spider Lane by fall 2011.

The improvements are expected to make UR Drive, one of two campus entrances from River Road and one of four overall, more inviting for stadium traffic. It also should have the least impact on neighbors.

McCulla said the timelines and new limits on stadium noise and lighting will be part of a revised permit application to be filed this week. University officials are hoping for approval by the Planning Commission and City Council in June.

[via]