Nonesuch Place

Nonesuch Place: A History of the Richmond Landscape - T. Tyler Potterfield

  Another treasure. It left me hanging, at every turn, in a good way. We need more geography and topography. I was especially interested to know details of the "leveling of Richmond," terracing, grading, cutting, blasting, etc.. How much has the topography actually changed since 1600? And what kind of terra-forming did the Powhatan tribes do? And how have the roads and trails been constructed, owned, contested, maintained or not? I'd love more data and history on the waterways, the creeks, lakes, wells, springs. How about logging and clearing? Biggest floods and fires... etc

notes

• the creek at the Head of Tide would be known over the years as Shacco's or Shackoe, a corruption of shacahocan, the Powhatan word for stone. The English kept the native word for the creek but came to refer to the large flat rock a the mouth of it as the Rock Landing
• the Powhatans referred to this great rocky outcropping [at the falls] in the their language as Pawachowng, translated by the English as the Falls at the upper end of the King's River
• Belle Isle to Mayos island - 50ft drop
• one of most iconic vantage points looking east from Harvie's Woods, later known as Hollywood Cemetery
• at one time, virtually every promonotory and vantage point on the banks of the river took it in
• Mayo, Powhatan Seat, 1737, not Powhatan Hill park
• Byrd II, Belvidre 1758
• Pratt's Castle 1850, a towered and castellated fantasy house on Gamble's Hill
• in 18th and 19th c the only craft that could navigate the falls were canoes maneuvered with iron-tipped poles and manned by teams of skilled and mostly African-American fishermen
• Poe developed reputation as daredevil swimmer/diver in richmond
• Olmstead observed in 1852 that richmond's islands supported a considerable amount of 'vice' or 'rowdyism'
• fishing constituted the most intensive human activity on the river from the time of Powhatan Native Americans to the industrialization of the river. during the spring spawning runs, richmond experienced a sort of fishing mania. on the tidal portion of the river, great seine nets hauled in vast quantities of sturgeon, herring and, most important of all, shad. those fish that made it past the seines faced a gauntlet of fishermen either tending fish traps or armed with nets and lines situated on the rocks, bridges and islands. the harvest could collect twenty thousand fish per day at the height of the run. typically, a toll or rent of one in four shad caught would be paid for the privilege of renting a fishing spot
• Ernest Walthall remembered the fishing scene on Mayo's Bridge during his boyhood as "lines of fishermen of all sizes, sex, color, and nationality" (1850-1860)
• 1730-1830 - flimsy wooden dams for mills and such, later ashlar masonry, then concrete
• Mayo's Bridge opened 1788, first bridge, rebuilt several times, toll bridge, only one until 1873 with free 9th street bridge!
• Mayo's Bridge 1911, Lee Bridge 1934, Alantic Coast Line RailRoad Bridge 1919
• b/w 1850-1920 large scale granite quarrying, carried by railroads
• lots of dumping of stone, earth, and debris into river, created Brown's Island
• pollution ended great fishing by 1900
• William Makepeace Thackeray, 1853, said Richmond the "picturesqest" he'd seen in America
• John Little describes geological underpinnings as "the result of alluvial deposits upon the granite basis of Richmond
• elevated plains, plateaus carved by river and creeks
• Mayo and James Wood surveyed site for town
• the use of large lots is also a common feature of VA town planning, reflecting the colonial era expectation that these would be garden rich towns and not dense urban metropolises
• the lines of the grid were surveyed without consideration of Richmond's irregular topography
• primary objective was create lots to sell
• the leveling out of Richmond proceeded over the course of the late 18th c through the 19th in the manner of a military campaign. prior to the civil war, the troops undertaking the backbreaking work of assaulting the terrain included african americans both slave and free, white laborers particularly irish immigrants, and chain gangs from the va penitentiary. after the civil war, the city regularly employed a chain gang of about twenty inmates from the city jail individually shackled with balls and chains and the Hands and Carts force that consisted of large numbers of paid laborers and dozens of horses and carts
• while new englanders were famed for caring for their elms, and the residents of savannah and charleston their live oaks, early richmonders seem to have shown little regard for trees
• Shockoe Creek incrementally disappeared from the landscape as it was converted to the central sewer main
• "nations" of richmond - gangs of boys from various neighborhoods competing/fighting
• early on in Richmond it became apparent that there would be a distinct difference between the lower and the upper portions of town
• by 1800 the preponderance of brick store buildings along main street cause that area to be known as the Brick Row
• prior to civil war, the most affluent lived west of shockoe creek  along franklin st, close to capitol
• African Americans able to afford property and build houses congregated in the Little Africa section, later jackson Ward, between 1790 and 1860
• little Germany north of Broad on 3rd, 4rd an 5th
• many Jewish immigrants in Shockoe Valley
• Butchertown at northern end of shockoe valley
• tenements built for rent
• in the planning for Richmond, public spaces were clearly afterthoughts; for Richmond and Manchester - land outside of town marked as commons
• 1780's construction of capitol, but no official landscape or park plan, later designated as a square or park
• 1851, richmond purchases land for 4 public squares, Monroe Square, Gamble's Hill, Libby Hill, and northside of Shockoe Hill (but later sold that one)
• Col Wilfred Emory Cutshaw - late 19th - big push for parks and improvements; tree plantings; tree nursery; Chimborazo, Jefferson Park, Taylor's Hill, Riverside; monument ave monuments; Church Hill Parkway (now Jefferson Ave) - filled in ravine
• he initially advocated Lee statue at libby hill
• after his death, not a lot of progress until Central Works Admin and Works Progress Admin
• Prior to the middle of the 20th c, the use of the term "public" in public spaces applied exclusively to Richmond's white population. The exclusion of Richmond's African American minority is embodied in the Richmond slave code of 1859, which banned African Americans from Capitol Square or the City Spring unless attending a white child or elderly person or on business for a white employer. It does not appear that segregation was codified after the Civil War, but the standard of the slave code became entrenched in the custom of segregation of public spaces. African Americans interviewed for this book recalled that the only urban park to which they had access was a triangular plot on Harrison Street...
• capitol square sign, "declaring that any slave who ventures within these gates shall be liable to a punishment of 39 lashes"
• most of labor for parks from Black workers and prisoners
• national playground movement, early 20th c
• early burial grounds: St Johns, in plots near house, African ground on Broad "under a steep hill" by Shockoe and frequently flooded, later Potter's Field, on another hillside by another creek Bacon's Quarter Branch, later in same area, the Phoenix Burial Ground? Jewish burial ground on Franklin Street, later others, Shockoe Hill Burial Ground 1822 also near Bacon's Quarter Branch
• Evergreen for Blacks, 1891
• Harvies family est. burial ground in Harvie's wood area of Belividere, later Holly Wood
• confederate not allowed to be buried in federal cemeteries
• "Rural" cemetery movement - not rectilinear, but curving with lay of land, picturesque, etc
• mid 19th c. - Holly Wood, Oakwood, others for Catholics
• Memorial Day thought to have developed in north during the war
• several "famous" people disinterred and brought to Hollywood, James Monroe, Jeff Davis in 1893
• April 2, the day confederates evacuated Richmond, a memorial day for Blacks
• also famous burials big events, John Jasper reinterred from Barton Heights to Woodland Cemetery in 1918
• Maggie Walker's death in 1934, thousands followed from 1st African Baptist to Evergreen
• central va had become known for poor agricultural management in the early 19th c.
• Roselawn - flour mill and ice harvesting - a plantation, later part of Byrd Park
• Boscobel - plantation, slave operated granite quarry between 1836 and 1857 - later part of Forest Hill Park
• Reveille 1791 plantation on Westham Turnpike (cary street) extensive ornamental gardens
• the term park derives from the english concept of a wooded enclosure for deer
• countryside male gatherings, to play "quoits" or race horses or duel or hunt
• Calvert Vaux and Frederick Law Olmstead leading the american parks movement, want to connect urban core with peripheral parks via greenways or "parkways"
• Cutshaw's "Trees of the City"
• 1890 Maj James Dooley and Sallie May Dooley buy Crenshaw's Farm and start "Maymont"
• granite masonry known as "spall work" - used by CWA/WPA all over the place
• the total public space open to African Americans by 1943 amounted to around 75 acres of a 1054 acre richmond recreation and parks system
• 1888 electric streetcar, encouraged suburban development
• Lewis Ginter commissioned Olmstead to design Sherwood Park; unimplemented prob due to 1895 depression
• Ginter Park, Barton Heights, Highland Park incorporated as towns in 1906
• in 1900 about 2/3rds of 120,000 people in greater richmond lived in suburbs
• major annexations: 1906, 1914, 1942
• Westham suburb, part became UofR, launched career of Charles Gillette, leading garden designer
• John Nolen - Windsor Farms
• Samuel Mordecai, 1850, "What would not some cities give for the privileges that we have thus abused"