“I’ve got a church in my back yard!” The hidden history of Granite Chapel on Forest Hill Avenue

Richmond’s long history, as recorded in its built environment, does not always survive to tell its history and the story of the people who created it. Churches, grand homes, office buildings, and entire neighborhoods rise and fall. Sometimes their passage is momentous, and sometimes buildings simply vanish due to fire or demolition and its fate unnoticed. Rarer is the building that still exists but its history has been forgotten and its original purpose blurred and then lost. Such is the case of the small Presbyterian church that once stood beside Forest Hill Avenue, not far from the railroad siding once known as Granite Station.

 

Both the church and the little depot existed because of the industry in what was then northern Chesterfield County. There are vast deposits of granite under the south side of the James River at Powhite Creek, and beginning in 1868 quarries in this valley provided stone for large projects in Richmond, Washington, and cities up and down the East Coast. The Southern Railroad ran through the center of the mining area and the siding at Granite provided shipment directly from the quarries.

 

A geologic survey from a 1911 geologic survey of the Powhite Creek valley. Surrounding Granite Station, the gray areas are granite deposits, and the crossed pick symbol shows the locations of quarries.

 

 

A snapshot of the activity around Granite Station in 1888. The depot itself stood where the Southern Railroad crossed “River Road,” today’s Forest Hill Avenue. Note the number of quarries in the area and the small houses on high ground east of the crossing.

 

Today, the Powhite Creek valley is not much more than the conduit for a highway that crosses the James in a river of fast-moving cars and trucks, but in the early 1900s this was a very different landscape. The valley would have been a rough-looking industrial zone of railroad tracks, gaping water-filled pits, gravel piles, cranes, and noise. The principal buildings such as the depot and a general store clustered around the railroad tracks at the grade crossing against a backdrop of raw stone and blowing dust. The valley was punctuated by the constant roar of grinding rock into gravel, the whine of drilling and occasional shouts followed by the crack of dynamite. Uphill and east of the works stood the small frame houses of quarrymen and their families, arranged along the River Road (today’s Forest Hill Avenue).

 

 

Today the area where the Southern Railway crosses Forest Hill Avenue shows none of the industry that employed the parishioners of Granite Chapel. On the right stood the Granite Station. Where the Powhite Parkway now runs through the valley, now only the walls of a water-filled quarry on the western edge of the highway hint at the amount of activity that once took place here.

 

Granite slabs, gravel and cobblestones were shipped from Granite Station constantly, but passenger service there was discontinued and the station itself eventually burned down before World War I. Nevertheless, the name Granite Station was still used as a reference point well into the 1950s when a derailment on the Southern was described in a Richmond newspaper as being a mile and a half from the “old Granite Station.”

 

The next station to the west on the Southern Railroad was Bon Air, a town created by Richmond developers as a suburban resort. Bon Air Presbyterian Church was founded in 1884 and under the energetic and popular leadership of Rev. James K. Hazen began a program of outreach and growth. The Presbyterian Church created “missions” in underserved parts of Richmond and the surrounding counties, and chapels opened in places like Fulton in 1908 and in Montrose Heights in 1912, each intended to eventually develop into full-scale churches. Rev. Hazen himself was responsible not only for the growth and popularity of Bon Air Presbyterian but also the construction of a chapel on Warwick Road and another to serve the workers of the Granite Station area. Research has failed to reveal the location and appearance of the Warwick Chapel where Rev. Hazen officiated at the dedication of the building in the summer of 1900. It was probably very similar to Granite Chapel. If the building on Warwick was sited like the original site of Granite Chapel, it was fronting directly on the road and the widening of Warwick to four lanes in recent years may have destroyed the site.

 

Construction of Granite Chapel was well underway when the weekly Presbyterian newspaper reported in June 1900, “Granite: A commission from the East Hanover Presbytery visited this place, which is about a mile and a half from the corporate limits of Richmond on May 8 and organized a church.” The Richmond Dispatch reported only a few weeks later that the new little church beside the River Road was almost completed.

 

The new chapel was 25 x 35 feet, built with arched windows, a small steeple, and one chimney served by a woodstove. The interior was finished with plastered walls above wainscoting, and ghost marks on the eastern wall indicate the position of a pulpit, raised a couple of steps above the floor level.

A conjectural sketch of how the Granite Chapel may have appeared when it was constructed in 1900.

 

Rev. Hazen, who died in 1902, did not live to see the church at Granite Station thrive and become a center of the surrounding community. The little building was the scene of numerous weddings and celebrations, and probably a quite few funerals although there is no evidence of a cemetery associated with the chapel. Marcus Lynch came all the way from Newport News to marry Richmonder Lillie Carbaugh at Granite Chapel in 1903, and the Richmond Times-Dispatch approvingly reported the bride was clad in white chiffon trimmed in lace when she emerged from the church doors. These little missionary chapels were also used for training students from Richmond’s Presbyterian Seminary, and Granite had its share of earnest young guests delivering the sermon.

 

The purpose of Granite Chapel expanded as it was used by local groups and individuals who formed a civic association. The Granite Civic Association met at the church in 1921 for an extensive “health drive,” with a presentation by a representative of the State Health Department. That same year the Civic Association also petitioned for improvement to Forest Hill Avenue, especially on the road to Bon Air. In the stretch between roughly today’s Stratford Hills Shopping Center and Thompson School, they counted 170 water-filled potholes. This survey of conditions underscores the difficulty of travel on some county roads and underlines the need for small facilities or chapels to fill the geographic gaps between large, established churches. It also demonstrates the degree of interest and the engagement of the community.

 

That location of the chapel between the Presbyterian churches in Bon Air and near Forest Hill Park was important. The little church that filled that gap largely catered to the quarrymen and workmen’s families within walking distance or a short wagon ride. Because of the concentration of quarry workers among the congregants, Granite Chapel may have been regarded as “blue collar” in comparison with the established churches down the road. Far more important than social standing among the congregation, the neighborhood church was local and familiar and must have been the spiritual home for many of the families who lived around Granite Station. For the dusty quarrymen walking home, seeing lights on in the chapel at quitting time must have signaled that a welcome diversion from their grueling occupation might be taking place that evening.

 

The Granite Chapel as it appears today. The chimney has been removed above the roof as has the small steeple. The once-arched windows have been replaced by conventional windows, the interior plaster and plank ceiling stripped and a garage door has been added in the wall beside the original entry.

 

One of the interesting details of the interior of the chapel is a pedestal chimney. This was an inexpensive way of creating a masonry chimney that stands not on the ground but on a cantilevered platform built on a wall. A tin stove pipe from a woodstove met the brickwork flue, hopefully eliminating the risk of fire. It should be noted this design, although less expensive than an entire brick chimney and footings, is understandably subject to deterioration of the wood support from the weight of the masonry above it, and chimneys like this are wildly out of code today and never used.

 

The “pedestal chimney” in the Granite Chapel building. A tall wood stove pipe ran up to the circular opening, eliminating the need for what would ordinarily be a masonry chimney running all the way to and through the floor.

 

A smaller version of a “pedestal chimney” in a room with intact walls can be seen a couple miles away from Granite Chapel at the Old Bon Air Post Office (circa 1916). Here the wood stove is still in place, but the tin pipe between it and the chimney flue is missing.

 

A window inside Granite Chapel as it appears today. Note the plaster has been removed from the walls but much of the supporting lath remains. The tops of the arched windows have been covered with exterior siding and conventional windows installed in their place, disguising the original appearance and purpose of the building.

 

An angle in the remaining wainscoting indicates the position of a raised dais and pulpit in the east wall of the former Granite Chapel.

 

With the exception of the brown wainscoting that runs around the walls of Granite Chapel, the interior must have looked much like this example of an unidentified rural church, with its dark ceiling and white walls.

 

The interior of Granite Chapel today shows the rafters that once supported the plank ceiling and the walls covered with lath, but the plaster was removed.

 

The standing seam metal roof still shows a patch where a small steeple or belfry was removed.

 

Glimpses of life in Granite can be seen in occasionally in newspapers, such as notice of an “elaborate entertainment” to be held at the Chapel on Christmas Eve in 1913. There was a large turnout in June of 1918 during World War I, when a patriotic service was held at the chapel. Service flags were ceremonially unfurled, one with six stars representing members of the congregation who were serving in the military during World War I, and another flag of sixteen stars, each representing service members from the Granite community. The newspaper noted that “practically every man of draft age has been called from the community, virtually stripping that section of young men.” The building may have served as a schoolhouse in the early 1920s after the Granite Civic League met with representatives of the school board to plan to accommodate seventy-five school-age children in the growing neighborhood.

 

Quarrying granite in this part of Chesterfield County continued in the first decade of the century, but declined in the years leading up to World War I. At the same time, the advent of affordable automobiles like Ford’s Model T meant people were no longer dependent on getting to church on foot or by horse, and Presbyterians in this part of Chesterfield now had the option of attending the larger churches in Bon Air or in Woodland Heights, or elsewhere in the city. Still, the chapel had value and as an indication of community interest, a hundred people signed a petition in 1915 urging the Richmond streetcar line be extended to Granite Station. Had this happened, a station there might have had a second life as a commuter hub and perhaps meant a different eventual fate for Granite Chapel.

 

In 1932, the dwindling congregation of Granite Chapel honored Rev. W.S. Campbell for his twenty years of service in leading the church. By the late 1930s the building was being used occasionally for Sunday school but principally by the Forest Hill Presbyterian Church Youth League, and at the end of 1937 the remaining congregation finally petitioned Forest Hill Presbyterian to move their membership to the larger church. A Granite Chapel Youth League was created and put in charge of the building, and announced they intended to repair the plaster and repaint the interior. As the only structure in this part of Chesterfield County suitable for meetings of any size, Granite Chapel was still filling a variety of needs, meetings, and entertainment for the area. On a warm summer’s Sunday evening in June 1938, for example, the “Young People’s League of Forest Hill and Granite” entertained their peers from Second Presbyterian on the lawn of Granite Chapel.

 

A 1942 topo map of the area around Granite shows the chapel, marked with a tiny cross and labeled “Granite Church” in its original site, close to the north side of Forest Hill Avenue. Notice all quarrying activity around this once-busy part of Chesterfield County has ceased by this date. At some point after 1942, the Granite Chapel was moved downhill from the small knoll where it was built and became a barn in the backyard of 5540 Forest Hill Avenue. The brick home that now occupies the original site of Granite Chapel was built in 1946.

 

Since the removal of Granite Station, the name, “Granite” still persists, but today more closely identifies the Black community that once existed west of Powhite Creek and the name is rarely used where it is shown on this map.

The current owners of what must surely be one of the few Richmond homes with a church in the backyard are Jessica Voutsinas and Alex Patin. They heard stories from previous owners and neighbors about the unique quality of their backyard barn and the improbable story of how the little church was put on rollers and moved. They hope to gradually restore the interior and return Granite Chapel to what was its original simple grace.

In 2020, Michael Paul Williams chronicled thestory of the “other” Granite, an African American village that was located on the west side of the Powhite valley and in many ways mirrored the White community to the east. Also made up of quarrymen, small farmers and their families, the western Granite community formed around Gravel Hill Baptist Church. The commercialization and widening of Forest Hill Avenue and the construction of Chippenham Parkway has ensured the complete destruction of almost all of the homes of the vanished African American village of Granite.

The Shockoe Examiner also explored the western, Black section of Granite and its community cemetery which has been almost completely lost to history. 

  

-Selden