The Road to Ruins – Style Weekly

The windows are boarded now, some sporting “No Trespassing” signs. Plants spring out of the mold and graffiti covered brickwork.

Yet the art deco structure located at 1209 Overbrook Rd. was once the pride of Richmond’s Black community. Designed by Edward F. Sinnott Sr. and opened in 1932, the former Richmond Community Hospital building offered a modern health care facility to the city’s Black population during the Jim Crow era.

This building appears to have a date with the wrecking ball. In February, Virginia Union University and developer Steinbridge Group announced plans to build 120-200 market rate and affordable housing units on six parcels of land that include the former hospital site.

The effort to save the building earned the top spot on Preservation Virginia’s 2024 Virginia’s Most Endangered Historic Places List, which was released this morning. Since its inception more than 20 years ago, the list has included 180 sites, the vast majority of which have either been saved or are in the process of being saved; less than 10% have been lost.

“It’s a way to call attention to threats to historical places and to put forward solutions at the same time,” says Elizabeth Kostelny, Preservation Virginia’s CEO. The list’s success rate is so high because of efforts by local preservation groups to save sites in their own communities, she says.

Each year, the nonprofit solicits nominations for sites to include on the list. An outside panel of experts, including specialists in planning, history, architecture, preservation and local government, decides which sites make the cut. Adaptive reuse is encouraged: “They don’t have to be museums,” Kostelny stresses.

Need alone doesn’t guarantee a spot on the list. There must be time to mount an effort to save a site, as well as local organizations working towards preservation. A site must also be eligible for inclusion on the National Register of Historic Places or the Virginia Landmarks Register.

“It can’t be an 11th hour crisis,” Kostelny explains. “There has to be time that the community can work to come up with a solution and enact that solution. There has to be a community organization behind the nomination, so there’s somebody to carry the ball forward.”

The stakes of preservation are illustrated by two of Richmond’s former hotels that were once at risk of demolition: the Hotel Richmond and the Murphy Hotel.

Constructed between 1904 and 1911, the former Hotel Richmond was instead rehabilitated by the state in 2016 to house the Virginia Office of the Attorney General. The Murphy Hotel, which opened in 1886, was demolished in 2007; a parking deck for Capitol Square now stands at that location.

Old Richmond Community Hospital may go the way of the Murphy Hotel unless preservation efforts are successful. The health care facility got its start in 1907 when Dr. Sarah Garland Boyd Jones, the first African American woman licensed to practice medicine in Virginia, collaborated with other African American physicians to open the first Richmond Community Hospital in Jackson Ward.

Desirous of updated health care facilities at a time when the city’s white hospitals were segregated, Richmond’s Black community undertook a painstaking five-year fundraising process during the Great Depression to build the 1932 hospital.

“It’s a tremendous story of the African American community realizing that they needed a hospital of their own,” says Kostelny of the site’s history. “They raised the funds to establish the hospital to provide for their community. There are so many people in the Richmond area that have a connection to that place.”

In a February letter to the editor published in the Richmond Free Press, the city’s Black newspaper, Grace H. Townes wrote that “during an era of segregation and medical mistrust, this hospital served as a beacon of trust and safety for our community. The doctors who practiced there were not just health care providers; they were pillars of our community who looked like us, understood our needs, and provided care with compassion and understanding.”

Ownership of the building was transferred to VUU in the 1980s when the hospital moved to its current location in the East End; the building has been vacant since. Monthly community gatherings now take place at the former Richmond Community Hospital site to raise awareness about its demolition and commemorate its history. In April, VUU and Steinbridge Group announced a $5.1 million commitment to honor the university and hospital’s legacy but didn’t provide specifics; an inquiry by Style on Monday concerning whether the building would be demolished was not immediately returned.

Currently part of Bon Secours, today’s Richmond Community Hospital in East End was the centerpiece of a 2022 high profile story by The New York Times. The expose detailed how the health system used the hospital to tap into a federal program intended to help low-income patients, generating millions in profits for Bon Secours by building clinics in wealthier neighborhoods as extensions of Richmond Community.

Preservation Virginia’s 2024 list also includes another Central Virginia site: Jackson Blacksmith Shop in Goochland. Constructed circa 1880 by Henry Jackson and his father, both of whom were formerly enslaved, the building is one of only two known remaining Black-owned blacksmith shops in Virginia. The shop’s centerpiece is an anvil that’s more than 130 years old.

“This is an amazing building that tells a story that tells the story of African American craftsmanship and entrepreneurship,” Kostelny says. “It really talks about the persistence and entrepreneurship that was part of this community. The building is threatened because of its proximity to the roadway and ground erosion, and it’s an earthen building.”

2024 Virginia’s Most Endangered Historic Places List

– Richmond Community Hospital, Richmond

– Grand Contraband Camp, Hampton

– Mount Carmel Baptist Church, Albemarle County

– Massies Mill Odd Fellows Hall, Nelson County

– Lower Surry Church, Surry County

– Suffolk African American Watermen Villages, Suffolk

– Jackson Blacksmith Shop, Goochland County

– Waterford Historic District, Loudoun County

– Blick Plantation, Brunswick County

– Washington Park Caretaker’s Cottage, Roanoke

For more information about the 2024 Most Endangered Historic Places list visit preservationvirginia.org.