Neighborhood Landmarks

Battery Park Christian Church, though originally established in the Battery Park neighborhood, has been at its present location since moving into its newly built sanctuary in December 1949. Located on the northeast corner at the intersection of Brook Road and Bellevue Avenue, Battery Park Christian Church sits between two of Richmond’s most well regarded historic neighborhoods - Ginter Park and Bellevue.

Ginter Park
Major Lewis W. Ginter, a wealthy Richmond industrialist and entrepreneur, conceived and planned Ginter Park in the late 19th century. Ginter, the founder of the American Tobacco Company, visited Melbourne, Australia where he was impressed by the businessmen retreating home to the country at the end of each workday. Thus was born Ginter’s dream for a Richmond suburb where, according to legend, a gentleman could ride to and from work without the sun’s glare in his face.

Ginter began implementation of his state-of-the-art community plan by purchasing several hundred acres of farmland in northern Henrico County.

He designed residential subdivisions organized in an extended grid pattern with varied fine single-family dwellings. He improved the existing road surfaces on Laburnum and Melrose Avenues with crushed stone from quarries on Hermitage Road. Then Ginter turned his attention to constructing new roads according to the plan with tile sewer lines in the roadbeds.

Ginter enticed Union Theological Seminary to move from Hampden-Sydney in Farmville, VA to the heart of the new community with a gift of land.

Ginter enhanced the beauty of the new community landscaping with thousands of deciduous shade trees and miles of hedges. Newly drilled artesian wells provided fresh drinking water for the community.

As if these enticements to new residents were not enough, Ginter negotiated the extension of the first electric trolley system, established in Richmond in 1888, to Ginter Park in 1895. For a nickel residents of Ginter Park could travel either to or from downtown Richmond in fifteen minutes.

Following Lewis Ginter’s death in 1897, Grace Arents, his niece and heiress, sponsored the establishment of St. Thomas Episcopal Church and supported the implementation of his dream. The only completed residences at this time were the workmen’s cottages on Chamberlayne and Hawthorne Avenues, waterworks houses on Westwood Avenue, and faculty residences on and around the Seminary Quadrangle.

In 1906 Thomas Jeffress, former business partner and co-executor of Ginter’s estate, founded the Lewis Ginter Land and Improvement Company to promote the sale of residential lots. Construction boomed from 1908 until the beginning of the First World War. A second building boom occurred in the twenties and lasted until the Great Depression. Ginter Park features a variety of late 19th and early 20th century architectural styles ranging from the modest builder’s cottages to large Colonial Revival mansions. Other styles include Tudor Revival, Spanish Colonial, Bungalow, American Foursquare, modified Queen Anne, and Shingle Style.

Ginter Park was incorporated as a town from 1912 to 1914 when it was annexed by the City of Richmond. Its mayor was John Garland Pollard who went on to become Governor of Virginia.

Source: Ginter Park Residents Association website http://www.ginterpark.org/

Bellevue Park

Pope Avenue is a short curvaceous street, which passes gracefully through the Bellevue Park subdivision. It begins at the stone archway on Hermitage Road and ends at Crestwood Road (originally called Clinton Avenue).

Bellevue Park is bounded on the west by Hermitage Road, on the north by Westbrook Avenue, on the east by Crestwood Road and on the south by Bellevue Avenue. A beautiful stone archway on Hermitage Road marks the neighborhood.

Bellevue Park was once a part of Westbrook plantation, which had its house and barns on what is now the grounds of Westminster-Canterbury retirement community. Westbrook plantation in 1787 was owned by Robert Price. In 1798, John Young and his wife conveyed 418 acres of the plantation to their son, William. The Young family continued its ownership of the land now occupied by Bellevue Park until 1877. John Pope, for whom Pope Avenue was named, bought 65 acres of this land in 1889.

Pope was the adopted son of Lewis Ginter, whose summer house was the improved and much enlarged residence of the former Westbrook plantation. Pope Avenue is said to have been a country road connecting Hermitage Road with the Ginter mansion at Westbrook. When John Pope died in 1896, the 65 acres together with another one hundred acres passed to John’s brother, George, who lived in New York. George Pope eventually moved to Richmond and proceeded to develop the area into lots for sale, naming it Bellevue Park.

In 1906, lots were offered for sale by advertising. It is believed that by this time sugar maple trees had been planted along both Pope and Bellevue avenues and that the stone archway with the name Bellevue engraved at its summit had been erected. By 1913 only one house seems to have been located in Bellevue Park and that may have been built much earlier; and only four lots had been sold. George Pope died in 1917 and the property passed to his sister, Margaret, who sold it to two brothers, Lee and C.W. Davis, for $100,000. Six months later, the Davis brothers had sold half of the lots for $107,000.

J. Lee Davis had a house built for himself on 14 acres of the subdivision in 1920, calling it Willowbrook for the willows growing along the stream nearby. The name remains on the gatepost across Hermitage Road from the Scottish Rite Temple [Willowbrook is today The New Community School].

Nearly all construction in Bellevue Park has been since 1920. In 1928 the City widened the street removing the sugar maples that had been planted years before and replaced them with small pin oaks. Bellevue Park subdivision, with handsome trees along Pope and Bellevue avenues, and the stone archway remain today as a memorial to the members of the Pope family and the Davis brothers.

Bellevue continued to grow and expand. The neighborhood is thriving with a diverse mix of neighbors. A small commercial district on the south side of the 1200 block of Bellevue Ave and a larger one on both sides of the 4000 block of MacArthur Ave offers restaurants, antique stores and markets.

Source: Bellevue Civic Association website http://www.bellevueweb.org/

Union Presbyterian Seminary

Union Presbyterian Seminary, located in the near north side of the city of Richmond, Virginia, is a theological seminary of the Presbyterian Church (USA). Through its main campus in Richmond, Virginia, a commuter campus in Charlotte, North Carolina, and an extended campus online, Union prepares men and women to serve the church as pastors, educators, scholars, chaplains, and missionaries.

The Seminary main campus, located on Brook Road in Ginter Park, features brick Victorian Gothic architecture and is on the National Historic Registry. This beautifully landscaped 56-acre campus of stately mature trees is in the heart of an historic and vibrant neighborhood. The campus library has been recognized as one of the finest theological libraries in the United States.

As a result of efforts undertaken together by the Synod of Virginia and the Synod of North Carolina, Union Theological Seminary was founded in 1812 as the theological department of Hampden-Sydney College, located near Farmville, Virginia. In 1898, the school was relocated to its current campus location on Brook Road. The General Assembly’s Training School (ATS) for Lay Workers was founded in 1914 as a complementary institution intended to train “workers outside of the regular ordained ministry.” In 1959 ATS was renamed the Presbyterian School of Christian Education (PSCE). PSCE offered a Masters Degree in Christian Education, and operated across the street from Union Seminary until 1997, when Union and PSCE were joined in federation, becoming Union-PSCE.

In 2009, Union's Board of Trustees voted to change the name of the institution to Union Presbyterian Seminary. In his address announcing the new name, seminary president Brian Blount emphasized the school's unique heritage of several "unions," as well as the school's Presbyterian identity.

Source:  Union Presbyterian Seminary website http://www.upsem.edu/

The A.P. Hill Monument

The bronze statue of Confederate Lt. General Ambrose Powell (A.P.) Hill stands at the intersection of Hermitage road and Laburnum Avenue. Designed by Richmond architect William Ludlow Sheppard, it was unveiled on May 30, 1892. The land for the monument was donated by Maj. Lewis Ginter. A.P. Hill's remains are buried beneath the base of the monument.