The Shockoe ExaminerBlogging the History of Richmond, Virginia: Film of VCU's Monroe Park Campus from ca. 1977

Wednesday, August 12, 2009

Film of VCU's Monroe Park Campus from ca. 1977 - Over 30 Years Ago.

VCU's Monroe Park campus, ca. 1977

Top: Corner of W. Grace and N. Harrison street; Bottom: Cathedral of the Sacred Heart and the James Branch Cabell Library. Notice the cars that are parked on Park Avenue. That section of the street is now closed to traffic.

Above are some stills from a film of VCU's Monroe Park campus (and environs - from Monroe Park to Grace Street) made circa 1977. The footage was filmed by VCU art professor Glenn B. Hamm (1936-1980). He taught at VCU from 1969 until his death in 1980. The video on YouTube was posted by his son Carl Hamm. Part one of the film can be accessed here and part two here. Carl is a local Richmond DJ (he added some great music to the film) -- his work can be accessed here.

Does anyone have any more old films of Richmond that they would like to share?

-- Ray B.

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Contributors:

Ray Bonis:

Ray worked at VCU Libraries' James Branch Cabell Library from 1989 until 2021. He is the co-author of Virginia Commonwealth University (2006) and Greetings from Richmond (2009) - an architectural history of the city.

Selden Richardson:

Architectural historian and author of Built By Blacks: African American Architecture and Neighborhoods in Richmond, Virginia (2006), The Tri-State Gang in Richmond: Murder and Robbery in the Great Depression. (2012), and Richmond Murder & Mayhem (2023)

On History:

"The dead were and are not. Their place knows them no more and is ours today...The poetry of history lies in the quasi-miraculous fact that once, on this earth, once, on this familiar spot of ground, walked other men and women, as actual as we are today, thinking their own thoughts, swayed by their own passions, but now all gone, one generation vanishing into another, gone as utterly as we ourselves shall shortly be gone, like ghosts at cockcrow."
-- G. M. Trevelyan (1876-1962) from his "Autobiography of an Historian," An Autobiography and Other Essays (1949).

Key Dates in Richmond History
(more to follow)

1737 – William Mayo laid out the original street plan for the town of Richmond on land provided by William Byrd II.

1742 – Chartered as a town

1780 – Virginia’s state capital moved from Williamsburg to Richmond.

1782 – Incorporated as a city.

1788 - Virginia State Capitol building completed.

1860-1865 – Serves as capital of the Confederate States of America.

1910 - Manchester, the city located just south of the James, is consolidated with Richmond.

1949 - Oliver Hill (1907-2007) elected to City Council, first African American since Reconstruction.

1968 - Virginia Commonwealth University created by the merger of the Medical College of Virginia and Richmond Professional Institute.

1977 - Henry Marsh elected as first African American mayor of Richmond.

2009 – Shockoe Examiner founded.