Walking Tour

A Thanksgiving Day morning walk around the neighborhood.

Walking

Walking through the neighborhood is seeing a mix of the past and the future. There are so many interesting houses — some empty, some destined to fall, some that will be fixed back eventually… There will be change here, sooner on some blocks than others, but it feels inevitable that this area will regain some of the lost respectability.

There are distinct details that change as you move south towards Broad. In our little area the streets are wider than any where that I’ve seen in the city and houses have small front and side yards and something of a back yard. A few blocks away at Venable and from there south and west towards downtown, the houses are generally closer together (row houses), with no front or side yards, and the streets become more narrow. The typical Church Hill street is not so wide as around us, but with similar houses and yards. It is more rare to have a double lot as we do. In some areas, though, there are a large number of missing houses/now empty lots that give extra greenspace.

Moving from our area on Fairmont towards Broad St. is a progression from worn to cherished. In between there are houses for sale in various conditions and prices, in various states of restoration and decay. There are 2 houses for sale within a block of us that have been recently made nice, but there is also the abandoned house next door. Across Venable St, more towards Broad St, there is more activity. On one block of 24th, we saw 2 ladies working on digging out a sidewalk in front of a house that looked like it had been sitting for a while, a huge duplex undergoing a quality restoration, and another restored ~1920 house for sale.

Between that and our block, though, are Venable and Pink streets. Venable St. is really neat — all older row houses close in to the street. It feels very cozy. At this point it feels a little scary, too. Pink St. has maybe the best name in Richmond and is only a few blocks long. These blocks are totally destroyed, though. There were up until recently a few cute little houses there with cute little yards set below the sidewalk, but they have been burned and abandoned.

Walking towards south and east from here, the Richmond skyline keeps peaking through on the horizon. At Broad St. the houses have remained well-maintained and are of a higher quality. They front onto Jefferson Park and have a tremendous view of the city (panorama)

Just up the street from us, on the 1100 block of 23rd St is an empty house with great potential — check out the double doors, the detail around the windows and molding. And this house still has the original siding - no ghetto brick or vinyl cover-up. It’ll be neat to see this house get fixed one day…

At the end of that block is an old store or something - it’s not real clear. This empty, old building sits on a triangle all by itself and is ancient. I would love to know more about this. At the same intersection, one of the streets is cobble stone, but not preserved like in Shockoe Slip — just a fact of life, a detail not yet recognized for what it is, or just undervalued, really.

On Pink St, there is one block with 3 empty, burned houses. These cute little houses have little cozy yards below the sidewalk. The other side of the block is empty, except for the homeless man that lives there. He keeps his stuff hung on the trees and bushes, or bagged and scattered on the ground. He recently found some bubble wrap somewhere and covered himself and his belongings in the bubble wrap. We’ve taken to calling him ‘Poppy’.

Except for the Princess Anne/Jefferson Park pictures at the end, I’m not sure which streets these other pictures are from.