The Boulevard: A Continuous Avenue of Culture and More

by Charles McGuigan 07.2001

The Boulevard is a majestic avenue that runs about six miles from the James River to Lewis Ginter Botanical Garden. Though its name changes three times on its course - from Boulevard to Hermitage Road and finally Lakeside Avenue - it is essentially beeline straight from south to north, linking the City of Richmond with Henrico County. Parts of it are in good shape, others are undergoing transformation, and there are sections that are just plain rundown and tired. But today, this boulevard, so peculiarly Richmond, is on the verge of becoming a continuous, uninterrupted avenue, embracing a rich mixture of museums, parks, houses, apartments, businesses, and a world class sports complex. It will undoubtedly become the city’s primo gateway and an avenue unrivaled in the region and the southeast.

Call it planetary alignment. Call it synergy. Whatever the case, things are ripe for The Boulevard. At about the time a visionary developer began purchasing and renovating the beautiful apartment buildings lining this venerable Richmond avenue, the director of the Virginia Historical Society had a rooftop epiphany in which he saw all of the museums and parks and other green spaces that fell within proximity to the Boulevard. Somewhere in there too, landowner and county officials saw a great opportunity to restore an aging retail corridor - Lakeside Avenue, a continuation of The Boulevard in Henrico County. Add to that, the renewed interest in Bryan Park, the phenomenal expansion of Lewis Ginter Botanical Garden, persistent talk of a first class sports complex, a neighborhood association’s fight to preserve Hermitage Road and the refurbishment of storefronts along North Boulevard. It’s all falling into place, each piece complementing the other, and what’s in store for that avenue, which was laid out back in the early years of the 19th century, will turn heads the world over.

As a Virginian, you wouldn’t call Chesapeake Bay, simply Bay; and as a Richmonder, despite what the signposts may say, you wouldn’t call that great north/south thoroughfare that passes by three of the city’s finest parks and the Virginia Museum, simply Boulevard. Just as the Chesapeake is The Bay, so too is this venerable avenue know as The Boulevard.

For the past month I have walked its length from the beginning to end no less than six times, and each time I was filled with wonder and a certain chauvinistic pride in this wide sweep of asphalt.

Restaurants on the River

It starts at the James River, as all good things must in this city, at a point where the sycamores grow, bone-white, like the massive femurs of an extinct species thrust upright into the earth. From the toll booth of The Boulevard Bridge, I stroll north and head up Pump Road. On the right is a thick wood; on the left a hurricane fence choked with trumpet vines, the flowers now in bloom, deep and rich as the meat of a blood orange. Through the diamond linking of the fence I can see the Pump House. Gray Petersburg granite. Slate roof. Gothic revival. I had heard from a very old woman, who used to sit on one of the few front porches in the Fan that survived that misdirected fervor of renovation in the seventies, that in the early years of the last century, maybe as late as the 1940s, dances were held in the pump house on hot summer nights. Chinese lanterns strung along the exterior, the sweetness of mint and honeysuckle sifting down through the air, choruses of cicadas in the dwindling light, fireflies flickering to life as the sun finally dropped from sight. 

I could see it, looking through that small diamond of galvanized steel. The buildings are still there, all intact, though sheets of plywood block some of the windows. Several light-orange city trucks are parked outside the buildings. Weeds grow through the cracks in the asphalt and water - white and foaming - surges through a long sluice, fed by the Kanawha Canal. 

City Councilman Bill Johnson and I had ridden a few weeks earlier down to the Pump House and further up the road to take a look at Kanawha Trace, condominiums built on a bluff overlooking the James. He said the same thing I thought as we looked at the old stone Gothic buildings of the pump house. “Restaurants,” he said, and I nodded.

A seafood restaurant, I was thinking, right on the water.

“Right down on the water,” said Bill Johnson. “You could have several restaurants down there,” he said. “It could become a destination. Right down on the water.”

I could imagine the restaurants, some with outdoor dining. By shutting my eyes I could see it and hear it. A full moon and starlight reflected in the water, the deep green silhouettes of the trees, the sound of cascading water coursing through the sluice under the old pump house, the rattle and clatter of knives and forks on china intermixed with the murmur of diners engaged in conversation.

“Fine restaurants,” Bill Johnson said, looking over at me. “Right on the water. Can you imagine that?”

“Sure.”

A Canal Ride to Maymont

It seems like a particularly good idea, considering that some day canal boats will plough the gentle waters of the Kanawha as far west as the Japanese Gardens, at the foot of Maymont.

I enter Maymont just north of the bridge and am, as always, amazed at the abundance of children here, even on this very hot, hazy Richmond morning. I spend time at the Children’s Farm, watching the kids feeding and petting the friendly goats. A peacock, with an audience of human beings, no pea hens to be found, struts on a picnic table like an actor on its stage. The kids clap, and parents smile. 

Working my way back from the barns and the corals, I cross one of the wide rolling greens and in the distance spy sika deer, and later American bison. The animals have fairly vast terrain to roam, and in this regard, Maymont seems superior to our National Zoo in Washington, D.C. It is a good hike through the park, up hills and down. The only exhibit that seems to border on cruelty is the one called Birds of Prey. There are falcons in this exhibit, as well as barred and great horned owls, and they are kept in fairly small cages. As I stand ruminating about the fate of these magnificent birds, a woman standing next to me tells her friend that none of these birds can fly.

“They wouldn’t make it in the wild,” she says.

“Really,” her friend says.

“They were found, injured on roads. They couldn’t fly.”

She tells her friend that that’s why it’s a good idea when driving along a road or highway, not to dispose of anything, even an orange rind. “People think it’s okay to throw food out the window because it’s biodegradable,” she says. “They’re wrong. Birds and other animals come out into the road to eat and then the cars hit them.” And this woman should know, she used to work right here at Maymont. “I know these birds,” she says to her friend.

Perhaps two of the most popular outdoor wildlife habitats are those of the black bear and the bobcats. There are at least a score of adults and children peering into the black bear habitat, which includes a massive outcropping of glacier-worn granite and a large pond. The bear, reclining on the ground, looking feverishly hot in his thick coat, is in the far corner and once he’s spotted the crowd of people moves over to that end of the exhibit. The red foxes that share the habitat with the bear are nowhere in sight. 

The bobcats live in a fairly large cage that encompasses a tree. A platform allows you to look down on the animals and there are two kids there looking at one bobcat which slinks around the base of the tree and climbs it. “Mom, look at this,” says one of the boys and his mother moves forward.

The Robins Nature Center

From the outdoor exhibits, I make my way up a fairly steep, drawn-out grade to the rear of the Robins Nature and Visitor Center. Under an outdoor pavilion, a group of kids wait with their teachers for one of the trams which should be by any minute. One of the children is impersonating a catfish. He lays on the ground and holds blades of grass at the corners of his mouth.

The Nature Center is one of the most incredible exhibits anywhere in this city. It rivals, in my opinion, Amazonia, the  much lauded rain forest habitat at the National Zoo. At the heart of the Nature Center is this terrific, living exhibit of the James River. It starts out with a cascading fall, that spills its water into one of 13 massive aquariums, one linked to the other, and each housing creatures that can be found in different sections of our river. The aquariums are set in a concrete-like material, molded and tinted to resemble stone. There are catfish in one of these tanks the size of the little boy who stares at it. In the lowest tank, down in the Tidewater, are a number of sturgeon.

Jason Young, who’s the chief aquarist at the Nature Center, dangles a finger-length dead fish in the water, tantalizing the submerged snapping turtle that sits on the bottom. The turtle’s neck elongates, its jaws open and in one single bite it swallows the fish whole, a satisfied glint in its star-like eyes. There must be 30 people, huddled around the glass, watching this turtle eat its sushi, and Jason starts fielding questions about snapping turtles. 

From the Nature Center I wander down to the aviary and then over to the Italian Gardens, where a young woman in a wedding gown is surrounded by her bridesmaids with a photographer snapping away. An elderly woman tells me, it’s just a rehearsal for the upcoming nuptials. “A week Saturday,” she tells me. Down at the Japanese Garden, I cross the Moon Bridge and the stepping stones. It is so quiet here, just the sounds of birds and insects, the air is fragrant. 

I take a quick tour of Maymont House, Richmond’s version of Asheville’s Biltmore. Built by Major James H. Dooley, a Richmond-born son of Irish immigrants, who made his bundle after the Civil War speculating on railway expansion in the South, Maymont perfectly reflects the era in which it was built, the early 1890s, the height of America’s Gilded Age. Flaunting opulence was the thing to do and Major Dooley, a man of his time, apparently spared no expense. I am reminded of the peacock that delighted the kids near the Children’s Farm.

The house is crafted of rough sandstone blocks and sports towers and gables. Like other millionaires of the time, the Dooleys traveled widely through Europe and were impressed by the architecture there, so it’s no accident that Maymont House is an amalgamation of styles, neatly synthesized by Randolph Rogers, a Richmond architect who died very young. Though basically a Romanesque Revival structure, there are elements, notably the roofline and towers, that echo the architectural design of a French Renaissance chateau.

Maymont University

Geoffrey Platt, Jr., executive director of Maymont Foundation, had told me during a recent interview, that Maymont is planning to do basic restorations of the downstairs area of the house, the kitchen and the butler’s quarters. “People are interested in seeing the working of the house,” he said. “Not everyone has a swan bed, but everyone has a kitchen. We will tell the rich story of the people who worked there.” Maymont also will expand and redo some of its wildlife exhibits. “We need a better way to display our raptors, the hawks,” he said. “We’re thinking of an observation deck in the buffalo and white-tailed deer exhibit and some new animals including a mountain lion and a bald eagle.”

There are also plans to repair the roadways and restore the grottoes. “The challenge is to find the funds,” he said. “But we’re doing remarkably well.”

Attracting 500,000 people annually, Maymont’s popularity is evident. “It all works because of the nature of the place,” said Geoffrey. “We’ve combined history with nature with science and that way we’re like a small university. People can come here and relax with their children. It is Richmond’s common ground.”

Geoffrey Platt looks forward to the day that canal boats will dock near the Japanese Garden. “Catch a boat downtown once the canal is navigable and take it to Maymont,’ he said. “It would be a tremendous tourist attraction.”

And the timing seems perfect. “I happen to believe that we have an exceptional museum community,” Geoffrey said. “This is the sum of our parts, this tremendous collection of museums. It is an exciting time for Richmond.”

A View from the Carillon

The air is thick with humidity as I walk over to the Carillon at Byrd Park. Evelyn Riley, a city maintenance worker assigned to the park, meets me on the side of the Carillon and escorts me into the elevator. The car moves up slowly, fighting against the pull of gravity. Evelyn urges the elevator car. “Come on,” she says.

Born in Littleton, North Carolina, one of seven children, Evelyn learned the value and necessity of hard work early in her life. “We worked cotton, peanuts, tobacco,” she tells me as she pulls open the brass gate of the elevator as the car comes to a slow halt.

She steps out of the elevator first, placing a block of wood between the elevator door and the frame. “Just so it won’t close on us,” she says.

Here there are bells, massive bells and smaller bells, clappers hanging straight down, mute. There are iron staircases that spiral all the way up to the top of the tower.

“You going up?” she asks, indicting the stairs, and when I nod she shakes her head. “Not me,” she says. “It makes me dizzy just looking up there. I don’t care for heights.”

Ascending the second flight of stairs, I make the mistake of looking down and suddenly feel dizzy. It’s like the Mission bell tower scene in “Vertigo” and I can see Evelyn down there, smiling up at me. I make my way out of one of the arches, through a small grated iron door, and stand close to the balustrade. All of Richmond is swaddled in a white haze and everywhere there are trees. Looking down Blanton to The Boulevard, all I see is greenery, thousands upon thousands of lush trees, dense as a forest, just below the haze that hangs on the horizon.

A History of the Boulevard

What we now call the Boulevard was originally known as Clover Street and it formed the main artery of an ill-fated town called Sydney that was laid out back in 1817 by Jacquelin Harvie, in what was then Henrico County. For more than 40 years, not much happened on Clover Street. Then, on the eve of the Civil War, Channing M. Robinson built the house that still bears his name, just off Clover, on the grounds of the present-day Virginia Museum of Fine Arts. This Italianate two-story has the distinction of being the oldest building on The Boulevard.

Not much happened along The Boulevard for the next 20 years. During that time the City of Richmond built a reservoir and developed a park around it that would eventually become Byrd Park. The man responsible for the reservoir, the park, the pump house, and The Boulevard as we know it today was Colonel Wilfred E. Cutshaw, a Confederate veteran who fought alongside of Stonewall Jackson during the Valley Campaign and held the post of Richmond city engineer from 1871 until his death in 1907.

He was clearly a man of vision and was selected for the city job in part because of a letter written in his behalf by General Robert E. Lee. Wrote Lee, “I take great pleasure in recommending to the council of Richmond for the position of City Engineer, Colonel Wilfred E. Cutshaw, a veteran of the recent war in which he served with gallantry. You will find him a man of fixed purpose and determination.”

Wilfred Cutshaw came up with the idea of a straight boulevard with a uniform width of 140 feet. He also had the foresight to purchase the land that would become Byrd Park. He believed the city needed more green spaces than it had. 

Under Wilfred Cutshaw’s direction, both Riverview and Oakwood cemeteries were laid out and the city sewer system was finally established and extended, with separate sewer connections for every lot in Richmond.

A Confederate Retirement Community

In the late 1880s, the General Assembly of Virginia purchased a large tract bordering The Boulevard, which became known as Robert E. Lee Camp - a sort of retirement community for aging and infirmed Confederate veterans. When completed in 1895, the “Camp” included ten cottages, a boiler house, a kitchen, a laundry, a bakery, a hospital, a mess hall, and the Confederate chapel, along with the Robinson House which became a Civil War museum called Randolph Hall. This land eventually became home to the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts and the Virginia Historical Society. The chapel still stands as does the Robinson House, which is undergoing exterior renovation. The cottages, or barracks, as well as most of the other buildings, all simple clapboard structures, were razed to make way for the museum. The Mess Hall was to be torn down as well, but J.A. Hudgens thought it was worth preserving. So in 1941, just before demolition was to have occurred, he had the old building dismantled brick by brick and then rebuilt on Lakeside Avenue where it stands today, at the Clarke Street intersection and is owned by Lakeside Appliance owner, Peter Francisco.

At about the time the United States entered World War I, a building boom mushroomed on the The Boulevard. Close to Reservoir Park (as Byrd Park was then called), and with baseball fields, tennis courts, a boating lake and a swimming pool a stone’s throw distance. The Boulevard had become prime real estate.

In 1919, as Battle Abbey neared completion, the statue of Stonewall Jackson was erected at the juncture of The Boulevard and Monument Avenue. The unveiling of the equestrian figure sparked a movement to rename The Boulevard, Jackson Boulevard. That movement failed.

A similar movement arose in 1954, when some Richmonders recommended renaming the avenue Cutshaw Boulevard, after the city engineer who really laid it out. But Richmond is reluctant to change, particularly time honored names (consider the Nickel Bridge), and again the movement to rename The Boulevard failed.

Blight Hits The Boulevard and Linden Trees

Throughout the 1930s, luxurious apartment buildings were constructed along The Boulevard. Many of the apartments even had separate quarters for butlers and maids. But by the 1960s, with the white flight from the city to the suburbs, the once prestigious housing on The Boulevard was in decline. Many of the apartment units served as student housing for undergraduates at Richmond Professional Institute and later Virginia Commonwealth University. Single family homes were chopped up into slipshod efficiencies and questionable one-bedroom apartments. The whole demeanor of the neighborhood was changing. Even the linden trees, three rows of them, running from the statue of Columbus all the way north to Broad Street, which had graced The Boulevard for more than 50 years, were steadily dying off of a blight. These trees were the pride of that avenue, planted on both sides of the street and on the median, three impressive continuous rows, making The Boulevard home of the second largest row of linden trees in the world, surpassed only by Unter der Linden in Berlin. By the late 1980s, virtually all of the linden trees, which bloomed twice a year, once in spring and again in late summer, had been cut down. And many of the apartment building and single family homes were on the verge of dilapidation.

As I cross the I95 overpass, I look down the wide corridor of The Boulevard where the linden trees once grew. I know The Boulevard and the Fan well, having spent the vast majority of my life living there. If you ever lived in the Fan for a long period of time and were fortunate enough to attend VCU and work part-time as a waiter or waitress or bartender so that you always had a lot of free time to roam the alleys and the streets and hang out in the bars and restaurants, then you know that for some strange reason Spring is protracted there, and summer lasts far long than it does elsewhere and the autumns are mild and tangy as cider and the winters mercifully short interludes with one heavy snow fall that shuts the Fan down before the eternal Spring returns. 

Wresting Control from Slumlords

But truth is that through the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s, many of the apartments in the Fan and along The Boulevard were substandard; after all, students will put up with almost any kind of housing. There were notoriously bad landlords. Tepper Brothers comes quickly to mind. There was a certain smell to many of these apartments, the overwhelming one being the stench of cat urine, because it seems that virtually every young woman renting an apartment in the Fan had one or two cats and a litter box in the bathroom tucked under the sink, with kernels of errant kitty litter strewn on the tiled floors like granola. There was also the odor of roaches and old grease. These smells were almost impossible to get rid of; they permeated every molecule of floorboard, grout, molding and plaster.

Some of the worst apartments I ever lived in were on The Boulevard, south of Grove Avenue. In that neighborhood there were brothels and nips joints, flophouses and drug dealers galore. It was a seedy area, but today that’s changed. I am absolutely stunned by what I see as I head down The Boulevard toward the museums. Many of the single-family homes are unrecognizable and the apartment buildings are clean, freshly painted, gutted and reworked. One man, Pierce Walmsley, a retired investment banker, was almost singularly responsible for the rebirth of housing on The Boulevard.

In 1995 he declared a war on the blight that had been infecting The Boulevard for almost three decades. He began purchasing the old buildings and completely renovating them. He has removed hundreds of tons of debris and applied thousands of gallons of new paint. The result is amazing.

To date, Pierce Arrow LLC., Pierce Walmsley’s company, has purchased 30 buildings on The Boulevard, many of which are now renovated and offer upscale living. It is a return to what The Boulevard once was and Pierce Walmsley ought to be canonized in the pantheon of Richmond greats.

The Virginia Museum of Fine Arts

The Virginia Museum of Fine Arts is a remarkable campus embracing the best of all cultures. I walk by the Confederate Chapel and make my way over to the sculpture garden and into the cafeteria for chilled water and air-conditioned bliss. 

As I drink water, I remember a recent conversation I had with the Museum’s director Michael Brand. He joined the Museum about ten months ago and has a distinctive Australian  accent. He hails from Brisbane, did his graduate studies in art history at Harvard and possesses an almost boyish enthusiasm about the Virginia Museum. 

“I moved halfway around the world because of this,” he told me. “There’s a terrific staff here, an excellent board of trustees and people who love their museum. It’s a wonderful place to be. So much grand work has already been done.”

And much more is in the works. Currently, the Robinson House, its exterior at any rate, is undergoing a renovation that should be completed by the Fall. But the museum is on the cusp of some fairly substantial expansion. For one thing, the exhibition space will increase by 130,000 square feet, about one-third of its current square footage.

“One very important thing we had to consider is that the museum has inadequate permanent exhibition space,” Michael said. And though the expansion will be significant, Michael Brand is cognizant that one of the great assets of the museum’s physical structure is its manageable size.

“We don’t want to oversize it and we don’t want it over scaled and impersonal,” he said. “For one thing, we live in a residential area here on The Boulevard.”

Other plans looming on the horizon for the museum include converting much of the existing parking lot into a large sculpture garden, along with the construction of a parking deck. “This is a most important opportunity to get the whole campus right,” said Michael Brand. “We will be adding to the body of important buildings in the state.”

And an important building the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts is. The seed that started the museum was a collection of 50 paintings given to Virginia in 1932 by Judge John Barton Payne, a Virginia native who had served as Secretary of the Interior under President Woodrow Wilson, another Virginian. Payne also proposed a $100,000 challenge grant to construct a museum. Virginia Governor John Garland Pollard accepted the challenge and campaigned vigorously to raise additional funds from private donors. He also promoted the idea of using state money to fund the fledgling museum’s operating costs.

Four years after Payne’s generous gift and creative challenge, the museum opened the doors of the new Georgian-style building, becoming the nation’s first statewide arts system.

Since that time, many other gifts followed. In 1947, Lillian Thomas Pratt gave her collection of jeweled Faberge creations to the museum. The same year, the museum received the T. Catesby Jones Collection of Modern Art. The collections continued to grow and as they grew additional exhibition space was needed and so the museum grew with the South Wing and later the West Wing. And through it all Paul Mellon, Sydney and Frances Lewis, and  Harwood and Louise Cochrane have been very good friends to the museum, donating art, land and money, enabling the museum to create its international reputation for fine art.

The Story of All Virginians

I leave the Virginia Museum the same way I entered and wander over to the Virginia Historical Society.

Not too many years ago, the Virginia Historical Society was a stodgy place reserved for scholarly men and women doing arcane research. I remember once being asked to leave when  I was researching an article on Hollywood Cemetery. This request came when I told the man who looked at me over his glasses that I was a student at VCU.

But all that’s changed now. These days, the Historical Society is egalitarian, with scores of changing exhibits, a lecture series that can’t be beat, and easy access to the society’s wealth of information.

“We created a museum like it never existed before,” said Charles Faulkner Bryan, Jr., director of the Virginia Historical Society. “We had the opportunity to create all of Virginia history under one roof. We created a museum of Virginia.”

He’s particularly proud of the permanent exhibit - The Story of Virginia. “Teachers from all over the state are finding it extremely convenient,” Charles told me. The Historical Society also has its share of outreach programs. “We do programs all over the state, actually visit every county,” he said. “We have traveling exhibitions that target poorer and more rural counties where people can’t afford to take trips to Richmond.”

The new Virginia Historical Society attracts far more people than the crusty, old one ever did. In the late 1980s, only about 6,000 people visited the building annually. Last year alone, more than 80,000 people entered its doors. “Today you see our museum filled with kids and I like that,” says this genteel Southerner with Charlestonian diction. 

It was Charles Bryan, Jr., who came up with the idea of Museums on the Boulevard, a collaboration of the museums, Maymont and Lewis Ginter Botanical Garden. It was in the late summer of 1996 and the Historical Society was in the process of building its new wing. Charles stood on the roof of the building, gazing to the south and then to the north, when it struck him. “I could see Maymont and the Virginia Museum and I could see the dome of the Science Museum,” he recalled. “I thought, ‘we ought to be talking together, working together on exhibits.’ Museums on the Boulevard evolved from that epiphany on the roof.” 

CMoR off The Boulevard

As I stroll down The Boulevard, I am taken with the splendor of the area. The old residences are coming to life again, thanks to people like Pierce Walmsley. I stand in front of Tuscan Villa, which was probably one of the first buildings on The Boulevard to undergo extensive rehabilitation, back in the 1980s. At the south corner of the property is a granite slab set in the ground, honoring the memory of Gilbert Robertson. 

I remember the man well, having purchased many bouquets of flowers from him over the years. He was an older man who didn’t have use of his legs. I think he had been injured during World War II or Korea, I’m not sure. But he sold flowers at the corner for more than 50 years and died in the late 1980s. He, along with Nannie Powell, who used to sell flowers in front of The Chesterfield at Franklin and Shafer, were probably two of the city’s most beloved and recognizable street vendors of flowers.

Just above Monument Avenue there is a palpable change in the streetscape. The house and apartments here are in rough shape, though one day, that too will change, as the revitalization of residential properties continues.

At the Children’s Museum of Richmond, there is a group of Westminster-Canterbury preschoolers with their guardians. The kids absolutely love picking apples from the mechanical trees, then filling the baskets with these plastic fruits, dumping the basket s and starting the process all over. They also gravitate to the Ukrop’s grocery store, stocking shelves, making change from the make-believe cash register. But the biggest draw seems to be the art room, where kids don smocks and begin painting or making collages. There’s even a loom here and kids shuttle the woof yarn back and forth through the warp threads.

The Earth, The Moon and The Vision

After a brief visit to the Science Museum of Virginia, I walk back behind the old building, crossing the old train platforms and enter the open woods back there. Like all the other museums around The Boulevard, the Science Museum is planning major improvements. Along with extensive interior refurbishment, the museum plans to place two giant sculptures in front of the museum and the adjoining planetarium. One will be a scale replica of the Earth sculpted of granite, eight and a half feet in diameter and weighing 54,000 pounds. The other, of white granite with a diameter of two feet, will represent the Moon. They will be placed at a scale distance from one another, representing the Moon’s orbit around the Earth. And what’s more, they will each fit into specially designed bases, floating on a thin veneer of water so that despite their massive weight they will  be able to be turned by hand.

Walter Witschey, director of the Science Museum of Virginia, said there are also plans to build a fresh water lagoon, a creek, wetland, an amphitheater, physics playgrounds, and a sundial garden on the 16 acres that face the back of the museum, in this open wooded area where I stroll. “We’ve been focusing a lot of our attention on that area,” he said. And eventually an electric trolley will run on rails throughout the Science Museum’s campus. “We’re already restoring a 1918 single truck Brill car,” said Walter. “We’re also moving toward creating a butterfly greenhouse, and there’s a lot more. Not only for us but the whole Boulevard.”

His enthusiasm is contagious, particularly when he starts talking about the Vision for the Boulevard, which was initiated by the Virginia Chapter of the American Society of Landscape Architects along with the Museums on the Boulevard. This vision is an overall blueprint of what The Boulevard might some day become. Although much has been done to create continuity along the six miles that make up The Boulevard, Hermitage Road and Lakeside Avenue, there’s still a lot to do. “We need to clean up some areas, drive redevelopment in the neighborhoods and suggest and guide and cajole community development,” says Walter Witschey.

North of Broad Street

Back on The Boulevard, it comes apparent just how daunting a task it will be to redevelop the section between Broad Street and Brookland Parkway. Already there is some evidence of renovation. Consider what The Flower Market and Moto Europa have done with their storefronts; on the other hand, there is the porn shop and a lot of other derelict looking buildings.

The city does plan to remove the preposterous parking in the middle of the street and to replace it with landscaped median strips, which is something the city tried to do almost half a century ago. In 1955, the city’s safety department claimed that parking in the center of The Boulevard between Broad and Norfolk street caused traffic congestion and hazardous driving. The plan, then as now, was to remove the parking and install a median strip. It looked to be a done deal until a number of North Boulevard businesses rallied at City Council and the proposal was defeated.

As I mount the rise over the railroad tracks, I look back and can see the patinated dome of the Science Museum. The sun is baking the concrete and asphalt. Sweat pours down my back. The heat here is unrelenting for there are no trees along this section of The Boulevard. I turn to the north and look at The Diamond, the bus station and the incongruous industrial businesses there. This is going to be the real challenge, I’m thinking, and then I look down at the sidewalk, which is cracked, pitted and heaving. An abundance of wildflowers creep from the cracks. These flower that seem to be able to exist almost anywhere have always been my favorites. There are trumpet vines and Queen Anne’s lace and cornflower-blue chicory. A mound of blackberry vines with fruit that will be ripe in a few days covers the guardrail. I am struck by the ingenuity and pugnacity of life and how the birth of beauty is possible even in a wasteland of concrete and asphalt.

Hotel and a Sports Complex

When Bill Johnson and I drove down this section of The Boulevard he invited me to consider a world class sports complex complete with an expanded baseball stadium and a natatorium. He pointed at International Trucks and other industrial businesses. “There should be three hotels there,” he said. “And over there parking decks. Indoor tennis courts there. The way this area is being used now is obsolete and it’s a complete waste. We have other sites in the city that would be better for industrial uses. We own property in other areas that could be used for industry. But not here.”

Bill had noted that this stretch of The Boulevard is particularly critical to its success because of its proximity to the interstate ramp. “We need to look at The Boulevard holistically. It needs to flow together, to be seamless,” he said. “This part of The Boulevard hasn’t been properly look at.  It has great potential. It’s a tremendous corridor and the interstate ramp should become a gateway to the city.”

Near the interstate ramp is the Holiday Inn Central, which is undergoing approximately $2 million in renovation. It’s noticeable, too. The place has been transformed inside and out. Along the perimeter of the property there are new plantings of plum trees and crape myrtles, maple, cypress and cedars. It softens the feel of the place.

Robert “Butch” Ball, Jr., chief executive officer of the Holiday Inn Central, said that landscaping alone has cost $13,000. “It’s a great location and it will get better all the time,” Butch told me. “It’s a central location. That’s our motto: Close to everything, far from the ordinary.”

At the tip of the parcel which brushes Brookland Parkway, a small park is being installed with further plantings. This parcel is owned jointly by the motel and the city. The city, the motel and the Sherwood Park Association are creating this “pocket park.”

Across the street, surrounding the entrance and exit ramp to the interstate, there is not discernible landscaping and as Bill Johnson said, “VDOT should be taken to task for this one.”

Hermitage Road Historic District

Crossing Brookland Parkway, I find myself suddenly on Hermitage Road. There are more trees here, the houses and yards well-kept. And on the corner of Westwood Avenue is The Hermitage, which is flanked on the south by an extensive perennial garden. Bill Johnson had said that the city should consider a number of pocket parks along The Boulevard north of Broad Street. “You can’t put a value on green spaces.” he said.

East on Westwood is the old Richmond Memorial Hospital, which is soon to become The Atrium at Ginter Park, a continuing care retirement community, which will include more than 200 apartment units and different levels of onsite care.

Hermitage Road is a lovely residential section of The Boulevard corridor. It is unified with acorn lighting and purple plum trees that grow along the median street. It also boasts three schools: Thirteen Acres, Linwood Holton Elementary School, and The New Community School.

A little over a decade ago, the serenity of Hermitage Road was about to be disrupted when the Masonic Temple announced plans to tear down Montrose at 4104 and Sunnyhurst at 4106, both of which had been designed by D. Wiley Anderson.

“The neighbors literally stood in front of the wrecking ball to stop the demolition,” said Hilda Braswell, president of the Hermitage Road Historic District Association. “There was an ensuing battle with the Masonic Temple, and we won.”

This battle prompted the formation of the historic district. “Since that time,” said Hilda, “we’ve stood for preserving the ambiance of the street. Hermitage Road is a wide tree-lined boulevard that represents many architectural styles through the decades and we want to keep it that way.”

The group fought hard to get period lamp posts installed along Hermitage and would like to see more plantings on the medians along with signs at both ends, marking the district. ‘We want to offer a good face,” Hilda told me. “After all, we’re an entrance to the city.”

A Trolley Line on The Boulevard

Hilda also solved a mystery for me - those large pylons in the middle of medians. “Those were the poles for the old street cars that used to run all the way out to Lakeside,” she said. “Those concrete pillars supported the wires.”

So it seems fitting that Bill Johnson wants to see streetcars running the entire length of The Boulevard, from Maymont on out to Lewis Ginter. “This is perfect for a trolley, not a bus, a trolley,” he had told me. “Can you imagine how successful it would be? There would be a link up to another trolley line running down Monument Avenue and The Boulevard trolley would make stops at all the retirement communities. They’d run down Bellevue to Imperial Plaza and up Westbrook to Westminster-Canterbury.”

Westminster-Canterbury dominates virtually all of Westbrook Avenue from Hermitage Road to Brook Road. It houses 610 residents and offers nursing care, independent living and assisted living. Recently, the Presbyterian/Episcopal retirement community purchased 25 acres that made up the now defunct Charter Westbrook, doubling its land holdings. Although no firm plans have been made for this recently purchased parcel, Westminster-Canterbury is considering its options. Wrote Donald Lecky, president and CEO of the retirement community, “The strategic planning process identified the priorities of our master plan. And that’s what we’re working on now; finding ways to respond to those priorities as we fully develop our now 50-acre campus.” Nothing firm yet.

Imperial Plaza with over 900 units has been in the process of some massive refurbishment. “Since I came on board three years ago we’ve been focusing on upgrading the current facilities,” said Glenn Kiger, executive director of Imperial Plaza. “There are also a number of opportunities for expansion and increasing our services. That might include more housing and additional health related services.”

Fixing Bryan Park

I enter Bryan Park through the arch. The park is in sad shape. All the roads are in need of repair. Youngs Pond is heavily silted, looking more like a marsh than a true body of water. The fountain pond by the azalea gardens is choked with algae and cattails. The telephone poles laid out flat, which had served as curbs, are rotting. The shelters and the surrounding parking lots are a disgrace. It is a park that has been neglected for too many years.

Lieutenant Tom Knight, officer in charge of Richmond’s vice unit, said Bryan Park is still the site of a lot of illegal activity. “Generally, it’s solicitation for a felony or indecent exposure,” he said. “Everyday we see it, there’s a lot of that kind of activity in the park. Right now, it’s the most active park in terms of that sort of activity.”

Bill Johnson recently recommended relocating the city’s mounted police patrol to Bryan Park. “That would probably take care of the problem,” said Tom Knight.

When Bill and I rode through Bryan Park, he slammed his palms down on the steering wheel on more than one occasion. “It’s all neglect,” he said. “And we’ve got to reverse it. This should become a priority undertaking. It is a massive green space.” He ticked off a list of improvements to the park. “We’re going to renovate the gate house. We’re going to dredge the pond. We’re going to repair the roads and we’re going to have stables and a tack house here for the mounted patrol. We’re going to clean this park up and make it more user-friendly. When I see what has been done through neglect, it makes me angry. It’s time to move on it.”

Irene Jennings, a Bellevue resident, almost single-handedly restored a good section of the azalea gardens. She has used people on work release and those performing community service to help refurbish the long neglected azalea beds. “Irene’s my girl,” said Bill Johnson. “She gets it done and I know we need to get an irrigation system in over there for the azaleas. We need to get into that park and get things done.”

 Rebirth on Lakeside Avenue

I drop down into Lakeside and the lack of trees is instantly apparent. There is no shade here, though someday soon there should be. As Phase I of the Lakeside Enhancement Plan nears completion, there are already signs of new life. For one thing there are the curbs and the gutters and the sidewalks, which make Lakeside Avenue more pedestrian-friendly. Trees have already been planted on the median strip in some places and some business owners have begun renovating their shops.

But this is a long strip - about one and a half miles - and much work is needed. It is, however, a section of The Boulevard corridor that is primed for retail shops. “The initial prompting for the enhancement was that Lakeside was such a viable corridor to the Henrico area,” said Brookland Supervisor Dick Glover, who was instrumental in securing county funding for the project. “It’s a corridor that had gotten old and run down, but it’s a corridor that can come back and I think it’s really coming along. It will just take time.”

And Peter Francisco, president of the Lakeside Business Association and owner of Lakeside Appliance, agreed. “People are really talking it up,” he said. “It’s really coming along, but it’s going to be a slow process. Things are really looking up.”

Franco Ambrogi, owner of Franco’s Fine Clothier, said he believes the county has done a good job and now it’s time for the property owners to take over. “I think the county’s done a good job,”, he told me. “We get a lot of positive comments from our customers and it will be a tremendous improvement. But then there’s the question of whether the businesses will do what they need to do to make this a retailers’ showcase.”

A number of the properties have already been renovated and rented, but there still seems to be more service than retail business along Lakeside Avenue. At the Hub Shopping Center, as I begin to wind up my tour of The Boulevard, business seems to be booming for Huckleberries, which recently expanded into another building and also opened an ice cream parlor.

A World of Edens

I cross into Lewis Ginter Botanical Garden and absorb its beauty. The Asian Gardens are now completed and things are filling out. In a pond that ends in a cascading waterfall, there are koi who cruise the surface like torpedoes. Kids are playing everywhere.

On the bridge that looks out over the lake facing Bloemendaal, I talk with Mary O’Connor and her ten-year old son, Tom, both from Savannah, Georgia. “We were in town for a couple of days and wanted to do something different,” she tells me. “We heard about the garden and I’m glad we came.”

Tom is busy spitting on the broad, round leaf of a spectacular lotus in bloom. When the saliva hits the leaf it beads up and rolls off.

“Would you stop that?” his mother says, and Tom sucks in.

This is a sunny spot of greenery, an oasis at the end of Lakeside Avenue, a world of many Edens, a contemplative place, a place for walks and the examination of nature. I spy a hummingbird no larger than a hornet, stabbing at the small flower of a bee balm. I can almost touch it, it’s so close, can almost feel the wind of its frenzied wings. It just hovers there on the hot, still air, moving from one red opening to another, sipping nectar. Lewis Ginter Botanical Garden is filled with such wonders and they never cease. Looking out over the water, The Boulevard materializes in the still reflection. I can envision the pocket parks along the way and the slow moving trolley, its windows open on a summer day. And there should also be a bike path from the river to the garden, not unlike the path that Lewis Ginter built of cinders a hundred years ago.

Monuments on The Boulevard

Images of men and women appear on the flat surface of the lake, super-imposed over the dissipating image of The Boulevard itself. That’s when it strikes me: The Boulevard should also be home to monuments. There are already three monuments there: one to Columbus; another to the brilliant military strategist Stonewall Jackson; and a third to poor, misjudged A.P. Hill. And there should be many others honoring the men and women who created what is truly good and non-divisive about this old city. I imagine a statue near Maymont to the Dooleys, another for Cutshaw close to the reservoir. And the only statue we now have honoring that gargantuan literary talent, Edgar Allan Poe, is that small hidden one at Capital Square. Why not a full scale monument to the man who created the short story at Grace Street not far from Talavera, the last place he visited in Richmond before his death in Baltimore. A fine-looking monument to Arthur Ashe at the sport complex. A whole boulevard of monuments. One of Oliver Hill and another of Maggie Walker, the heroes of our city. One of Lewis Ginter at Westbrook. Another of Gabriel Prosser, a short distance from the Spring House on Lakeside Avenue, where Gabriel planned his fight for freedom. And near the end of Lakeside Avenue, a statue to Grace Arents, altruist and philanthropist, who made the garden and so many other good things, not merely visions, but realities.