Franklin Street Artistic Mansions II: A Lecture and Walking Tour with Charles Brownell, Ph.D.

A photo of Franklin Street from 1891. It features some of the large mansion houses present.

When

April 6, 2019 from 2:00 PM to 5:00 PM

Where

James Branch Cabell Library, Lecture Hall (Room 303)
901 Park Ave., Richmond, Va. 23284

Description

The Brownells return to VCU Libraries for an encore lecture on the historic architecture and interior design found in the once glittering mansions on West Franklin Street in the heart of VCU’s Monroe Park Campus. Following the one-hour lecture, the Brownells lead a walking tour of West Franklin Street. A reception follows.

While ample seating is available for the lecture, space for the walking tour is extremely limited and requires a separate reservation.

Parking is available for a fee in the West Broad Street, West Main Street and West Cary Street parking decks. If special accommodations are needed, or to register by phone, please contact the VCU Libraries Development office at (804) 827-3616.

Registration

Please complete the online form to reserve a seat at the lecture.

Sign up for the walking tour by contacting Antonia FD Vassar vassaram@vcu.edu (804) 827-1165. Registration for the walking tour will be closed on Friday, March 29 or when all slots are filled.

Image: 800 block of West Franklin Street. ca 1891, courtesy of The Valentine

No comments:

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.