The Shockoe ExaminerBlogging the History of Richmond, Virginia: Broad Street Old and Historic District, Richmond, Virginia, 1986.

Friday, May 29, 2015

Broad Street Old and Historic District, Richmond, Virginia, 1986.

VCU Libraries has just added a new digital collection

- click on the image below for a sneak peek:

http://vculibraries.tumblr.com/post/119950008974/a-new-gif-to-celebrate-the-launch-of-a-new-digital

The Broad Street Old and Historic District, Richmond, Virginia was published by Historic Richmond in 1986, and was intended as a guide for owners and developers of projects located in the Broad Street Historic District. Architectural details for each building is dissected block by block, and over 50 historical images of this area of Richmond are featured.

- Ray

2 comments:

john m said...: This really is an *amazing* book. I've been intending to scan mine and share it out forever, but it's size has kept from getting started.; May 31, 2015 at 8:53 AM
Ray said...: It IS great. Another great job by VCU Libraries :-); June 2, 2015 at 1:51 PM

Post a Comment

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.