The Shockoe ExaminerBlogging the History of Richmond, Virginia: Aerial view of the Richmond Professional Institute (RPI) campus from the 1958 (now the Monroe Park campus of VCU).

Thursday, March 13, 2025

Aerial view of the Richmond Professional Institute (RPI) campus from the 1958 (now the Monroe Park campus of VCU).

67 years ago. Aerial view of the Richmond Professional Institute (RPI) campus from the 1958 Cobblestone yearbook. RPI was sometimes referred to as the Cobblestone campus because of the stones used in the street alleys in and around the school. You can see the 800 block of West Franklin St. on the right. Park Ave on the far left. A major walkway/alley runs south to north in the middle, still used by students at what is now VCU, it runs from Laurel St. north to what is now the old Anderson Gallery building. The arrow in the image is pointing to the Administrative Building (or the Admin. Building as they said then). Many today know it as Ginter House. Not many of these buildings have survived the growth of RPI and later VCU (RPI merged with MCV in 1968 to become VCU). -- Visit this site to view more Cobblestone RPI yearbooks.

- Ray

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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.