A Study in Demolition by Neglect: Virginia Union University’s Richmond Community Hospital Building – 1209 Overbrook Road

Demolition by neglect is defined as a technique where an inconveniently historic or culturally valuable structure is deliberately ignored and, with time, reduced to ruin. This allows the indifferent entity that owns it to then proceed with demolition, and, ironically, public safety is often cited as the justification. Demolition by neglect is in action today as the City of Richmond oversees the terminal deterioration of its Westham Train Station. This is the same technique that left the City’s Leigh Street Armory (now the Black History Museum) a roofless ruin in the middle of Jackson Ward for a generation. Apathetic functionaries and unimaginative leadership use this cheap tool to create vacant lots where important buildings, homes, and sometimes, entire neighborhoods once stood.

 

The building in 2003, freshly boarded up and in relatively good condition, with a sign in the front yard promising its reuse. Now abandoned for twenty years, the building has declined during the “stewardship” of its negligent owner, Virginia Union University, and may be in danger of being demolished.

The former Richmond Community Hospital building at 1209 Overbrook Road is one of these endangered sites, a building rich with history and emblematic of the perseverance of the African American community in Richmond. Properly interpreted, the renovated building could be a valuable addition to a neglected part of the VUU campus. Instead, it has been allowed to rot for decades, slowly decaying and now not even the boarded windows are secure. The former hospital is facing a new threat in the careless hands of Virginia Union University.

 

The former Richmond Community Hospital building as it appears today.

 

The efforts to create the Richmond Community Hospital began in 1927, with a bold proposal to raise $100,000 from the Black community and $100,000 from Richmond Whites. This appeal across racial lines was unusual in segregated Richmond. A full-page advertisement in a 1927 newspaper made it clear that the hospital project hinged on the White community stepping up and it made “an appeal to the conscience and to the humanity of the White Citizens of this Community.”

 

The Richmond Community Hospital at 1209 Overbrook Road, pictured when it opened in 1934.

 

Donations and letters of endorsement came in from all quarters, starting with Virginia Governor Harry F. Byrd. With his history as a staunch segregationist, it is probably not surprising that he would encourage a “colored” hospital separate from the extensive facilities available to Whites. The Governor and his motives aside, a heartfelt effort was made across Richmond for the new hospital, with pledges coming in from both the poorest Black neighborhoods and from the grandees of Cary Street Road, from Jackson Ward to Monument Avenue.

 

The cornerstone marks the building date in 1932 and that of the predecessor hospital in 1902.

 

Unfortunately, the Great Depression intervened. Pledges boldly made in the late 1920s withered in the uncertainty of a declining economy as massive unemployment swept through Richmond and the rest of the country. By 1930, only $26,000 was in the fund for the new hospital. The work continued, though, and in November 1932 the cornerstone was laid with Masonic ritual and ceremony. One side of the stone records the construction of the hospital and on the other side an earlier date records the establishment in 1902 of the Sarah G. Jones Memorial Hospital, the predecessor of Richmond Community Hospital.

 

One official overseeing the hospital project glumly admitted, “This movement was going over satisfactorily until the closing of our banks in March 1933, which paralyzed our efforts to collect on subscriptions.” The Richmond public rose to the occasion, and there were many fund drives and public events to raise money and draw attention to the mission and the plight of the Community Hospital. To prevent the building from being auctioned in early 1934, the African American Southern Aid Society Insurance Company raised money by sponsoring a show on a vacant lot at Ninth and Broad that including Phantom, the Trick Horse and the Hamm Brothers musical comedy act. The National Association of Letter Carriers held a benefit dance at the Roseland Ballroom.

 

The crumbling and boarded entrance of the former hospital building.

 

Benefit exhibitions and dances were held in Jackson Ward, and Church Hill, and in South Richmond. A woman’s boxing show was staged in 1934 at the “Colored Recreation Center Building” at St. Paul and Charity Streets featuring a match between a Miss Maitland and a Miss Wheeldin with “boxing and acrobatic dancing.” White people, too, would be accommodated, so they need not stay at home. Whites were also encouraged to attend “Richmond After Dark,” a musical revue to raise money for medical equipment, featuring Virginia Leech, “World’s Greatest Female Tap dancer,” and Richmond’s own tapdancing star, Snowball Crump.

During one of the fundraisers, a newspaper published an exquisitely Richmond statement that called for donations while still managing to thread the complexities of this segregated city: “This progressive, enlightened, and cultural community cannot go backward or do less than other communities for its Negroes. The solution to the problem is a Negro hospital where White and Negro physicians and surgeons may treat Negro patients. There is no other hospital in Richmond, where such an arrangement can be perfected.”

 

An advertisement for a musical revue in 1935 benefiting the hospital X-ray department.

 

The Richmond Community hospital opened on June 4, 1934. It immediately began to serve the people it was constructed by, and for, and is among the buildings in Richmond truly “built by Blacks.” By the end of 1948, the hospital reported during the year it had 24 beds and served 1300 patients, including 538 surgeries, 438 obstetrics cases, and 317 births. The facility was well managed, with almost all of the costs being paid for by patient fees and a $5,000 grant from the City of Richmond covering the remaining operational expenses.

 

 

The Richmond Community Hospital building in 2007 when it appeared in “Built by Blacks: African American Architecture and Neighborhoods in Richmond.”

 

Richmond Community Hospital moved to a new location in Church Hill in March 1980. Faced with a housing shortage, Virginia Union converted the former hospital building on Overbrook Road into dorm rooms to accommodate thirty women. After that temporary use, it was boarded up and has sat abandoned by its irresponsible owner for decades. It was examined in 2007 for the book, “Built by Blacks,” and appeared to be in the same condition then as now: completely neglected and deteriorating.

 

The rear of the deteriorating Community Hospital building.

 

  

Two open windows in the basement rear of the former hospital, making it easy to enter the unsecured building.

 

As part of its mission statement on its website, Virginia Union makes the firm statement: “Virginia Union University is nourished by its African American heritage…” It is a pity this is not true concerning buildings the school owns, buildings rich with African American heritage on campus that are being allowed to decay and disappear through the inaction of Union itself.

 

Richmond Community Hospital was once the symbol of hope and progress for so many African Americans. The idea that this structure, a birthplace, a refuge, and a source of pride is being treated in this fashion by a historically Black university is cruelly ironic. Nevertheless, if we act, Richmonders need no longer watch as our historic resources are ignored, squandered, and destroyed, and if we object, our institutions will no longer be complicit in the erasure of Richmond’s sometimes complicated, often painful, but always interesting past.

 

The President of Virginia Union University is Dr. Hakim J. Lucas, and his email address is HJLucas@VUU.EDU. Email Dr. Lucas’ and ask him why this important building is being destroyed by demolition by neglect and urge him to secure the former Richmond Community Hospital building from trespassers.

 

 - Selden