The Shockoe ExaminerBlogging the History of Richmond, Virginia: Where is this in Richmond?

Monday, November 22, 2010

Where is this in Richmond?

Can you name the location and year for this scene in Richmond?

What is being constructed on the left?

Answers will appear on Wed.

4 comments:

Amblus said...: That looks like Hibbs Hall on Shafer at VCU, perhaps in the early 1970s? Are they building the dining hall portion?; November 22, 2010 at 11:07 AM
WillyJake said...: I concur...It's Hibbs...I've never seen Shafer with traffic on it before?! Always the best photos on here! Thanks Examiner!; November 22, 2010 at 3:52 PM
Bob Winthrop said...: Note there is a one inch jog in the windows where the addition meets the original part of Hibbs.; November 22, 2010 at 4:25 PM
Anonymous said...: Ah, good old Hibbs Building, where they apparently washed the halls at night with used hot dog water from downstairs. I feel like I spent my entire youth in the smelly corridors of the Hibbs Building.; November 23, 2010 at 8:08 AM

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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.