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| A view of Blue Shingles, circa 1948.
Note the arches of the CSX railroad bridge across the James River,
visible on the left through the trees, and the formal “auto court” in the
foreground, part of the extensive Charles Gillette-designed gardens around Blue
Shingles. |
When Lorenzo Sibert Evans and his wife, Alma, built a new
home on a dramatic bluff overlooking the James River in the early 1920s, they
lavished a lot of money and attention on the project. It was a beautiful home with a breath-taking
view across the James River valley; a jewel whose naturally beautiful setting
was further enhanced by the designs of Charles Gillette, the premier Virginia
landscape architect of the day. The Evans
could have hardly imagined their lovely home and its surrounding gardens would,
within fifty years, be erased from the earth.
They could not have dreamed the last trace of all their expense and
aspirations would be eliminated by something as mundane as a change in shipping
specifications for American railroads.
The Evans purchased the property that would become known
as Blue Shingles (named for the distinctive color of the roof) in 1922, and
popular Richmond architect Otis Asbury was commissioned to design a
five-bedroom three-story home. Richmond
historian Harry Kollatz has researched Blue Shingles extensively and has
written about the house for Richmond Magazine.
He found another Asbury-designed home from 1913 at 2502 Monument and
termed it an architectural cousin of Blue Shingles.
Asbury designed a dozen homes along Monument Avenue, but
few were in the Mediterranean style found
at Blue Shingles and the house at 2502 Monument. No matter what the design, Richmond’s grand
boulevard must have been the premier venue for a Richmond architect to display
his craft. Asbury’s designs were a popular contribution to the Monument Avenue
streetscape for more than a decade, beginning around 1910.
No doubt his work for Richmond’s elites on Monument
informed the modernity, style, and conveniences of the mansion that Asbury
designed for Mr. and Mrs. Evans. The
house charmed one visitor in 1948, even 25 years after the construction of Blue
Shingles:
This magnificent completely modern residence has on the
first floor, hall, drawing room, dining room and den all with exceptionally
handsome walnut paneling. The tile
kitchen and butler’s pantry is complete.
On the second floor there are five bedrooms and four baths; also
dressing rooms and large closets. And
the third floor is plastered, with cedar room, storage space, servants’ room
and bath. The full basement contains
recreation room, large storage space, laundry room, also a finished room and
bath most convenient for yardman and chauffeur.
There is a three-car garage. All
little conveniences have been thought of, such as clothes chutes, incinerator
and outside water system. The copper
roof is of the best quality and all gutters and downspouts are first quality.
Asbury’s architectural drawings for Blue Shingles (preserved
in Gillette’s papers at the Library of Virginia) are dated March 1922. Charles Gillette began his portion of the
project in October of the same year, starting with a grading plan to shape the
Blue Shingles hilltop to accommodate his vision and that of the Evans. That fall, as the house was being
constructed, Gillette’s office produced drawings that included gardens and
courts, terrace walls, entrance gates, a teahouse, a formal garden, a vegetable
garden, a dovecote, a pergola, and a pool.
Almost exactly a year later, Gillette produced what he titled a “Plan of
Final Arrangement of Grounds” for the Evans, completing his role in lavishing
many of his signature design elements around their new home. For passengers on trains crossing the James
below the mansion, looking up at Blue Shingles must have been a visual delight
as the house and gardens on their dramatic hilltop were silhouetted against the
sky.
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| This arial view of the area around
Blue Shingles was made in 1937. |
Despite the charming setting and all the money lavished
in Blue Shingles by the Evans and their architects, the estate and its
manicured setting seemed ill-fated. The
Evans’ son, Lorenzo Jr., shot himself in a car parked in the courtyard of Blue
Shingles in 1955. The senior Evans died
three years later. In 1966 the Evans’
daughter sold the property to C. Merle Luck, owner of the extensive quarry
business that still bears his name.
Luck, wrote Harry Kollatz, envisioned the developmental potential of the
property and cared little for the house and landscape.
 |
| This street sign is now the sole
remaining trace of the extensive estate and gardens that once occupied a
hilltop site west of the Carillon neighborhood. |
Vandals, who partied in the weedy ruins of the once-grand
Gillette gardens, literally tore the lavish house to pieces, damaging it
extensively, looting the interior and placing Blue Shingles beyond the hope of
restoration. In July 1967, a Richmond
newspaper described fifty to seventy-five thousand dollars worth of damage
having been done to the house since the previous December:
A breeze now comes through the broken windows of an
English style drawing room paneled in black walnut. In fact, every window in the house is
broken. Words are scrawled on the
walls. The paneling has holes punched in
it or is torn from the walls, and hand-carved mantels have been ripped off or
chopped up. The wrought iron bannister
on the main staircase is gone, and several sections of the wrought iron balcony
railing are missing. French doors bare
of panels stare down a gentle slope to the river, and huge holes have been dug
for no apparent reason in the now overgrown formal gardens, where large boxwoods
line brick walls.
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| Like the estate itself, the cast concrete bridge that
once led to Blue Shingles has been utterly erased and a new guard rail is the
only hint it ever existed. Note the double CSX tracks below. |
The following year the entire site was demolished and the
once-grand house, its gardens, and the hilltop it occupied were scraped clean. Ambitious development plans calling for two
apartment towers on the site languished in the face of neighborhood opposition
and were mired in red tape. The years
passed and the woods returned and covered the scarred earth on the hilltop.
 |
A view of the Blue Shingles bridge
before its demolition by the CSX Railroad.
|
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This now-demolished bridge across
the CSX railroad tracks was the last
gasp of the vanished estate, Blue
Shingles.
|
For fifty years, “Blue Shingles Lane” has been no more
than an oddly named alley on the western edge of the Carillon
neighborhood. The lane quickly became an
overgrown path leading to that aging concrete bridge to nowhere. For decades, the bridge (which was perhaps
the first thing the Evans had to build in order to access the site) was the
only surviving structure of the entire Blue Shingles complex of house, gardens,
and entry road. The construction of the Powhite
Parkway in the early 1970s further isolated the site, and turned it into a
triangular urban mesa between the highway, the river, and the railroad tracks. Unfortunately,
the Blue Shingles bridge, designed for the height specifications of the1920s, could not accommodate today’s
taller rail cars and double-stacked shipping containers. CSX Transportation, the owner of the tracks
and the bridge above them, recently demolished the structure to comply with
industry standards.
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| This overgrown lane was once the
approach to Blue Shingles. |
It is always remarkable and sad when the scene of such
style and pride, craftsmanship and design as the Blue Shingles estate is
utterly destroyed. It is just as disquieting
to think the extensive gardens, the modern and beautiful house, and all the
money and talent that were poured into the home and gardens have now completely vanished as though they
never existed. Today, only unidentifiable
lumps of brick and cement protrude from the scrubby woods that cover the site
of the mansion and its once-grand surroundings.
 |
| Today, only scattered lumps of unidentifiable masonry
mark the place where Blue Shingles once stood and it is impossible to tell if
this was part of the house itself or the extensive formal gardens that
surrounded it. |
The bridge to the estate, the last gasp of Blue Shingles,
has fallen to the wrecking ball and joined the high-style house and gardens,
the paneling and the wrought iron, the pergola, the tea house, the clothes
chutes and the dove cote in a landfill somewhere. Only the rock and the river remain. They wait for lights on the hilltop again, there
where the Evans’ guests once wandered the graceful but doomed gardens and swept
out through the French doors of Blue Shingles to watch the sun go down.
-- Selden Richardson, September, 2015.
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