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The aged red brick and boarded up windows of Richmond Community Hospital have been at the center of debate in North Side, where residents have been rallying to save the historic building.
A freshly achieved historic designation could aid in the preservation of that historic building.
The hospital, now closed since the 1980s and covered in Ivy, was once the first Black-owned hospital in the city. It was the only place where Black physicians could practice, and Black patients could receive medical care.
The building’s future has been under threat since Virginia Union University, which owns the land and the building, unveiled a partnership with a New York-based investor on a $40 million project for up to 200 residential units, which might result in the historic hospital’s demolition.
The college has not said definitively that it plans to demolish the hospital.
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Thomasina T. Binga, 92, has lived in her family home on a corner in Frederick Douglass Court for the past 60 years.
Her son was born at Richmond Community Hospital. Several of her former neighbors were doctors at that hospital and most of the neighborhood’s historic residents were also born there.
She said she deplores the idea that Virginia Union might want to demolish the building, condemning a piece of history.
“Everything Black folk build, the first thing they want to do is tear it down,” Binga said. “Nobody wants to talk about preservation at all.
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The area around Frederick Douglass Court and Overbrook Road was once a prominent Black community with the hospital at its foreground. Lawyers, bankers, and civil rights leaders all lived in the neighborhood.
“This is a neighborhood that doesn’t need that kinds of stuff over here,” Binga said. “It could be a community asset.”
Richmond Community Hospital was named Tuesday to Virginia’s list of Most Endangered Historic Places for 2024.
The designation could help in its protection and preservation while also providing status for future applications on the state or national historic registries.
The list, created by the Preservation Virginia, recognizes sites statewide that are facing imminent or sustained threat.
According to the nonprofit, only 10% of buildings named to its list have been lost to demolition or neglect.
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Viola Baskerville, a former Richmond City Council member, state delegate and Cabinet Secretary for Gov. Tim Kaine, said Richmond Community Hospital’s preservation is important as a lesser-discussed piece of Richmond’s Black history.
“This designation today also raises the statewide awareness of impending danger of this fight being lost,” Baskerville said. “Of course, that hospital served people African American African American population not only in Richmond, but throughout Central Virginia. So this is why this is important.”
Baskerville said that much of local Black history is preserved and interpreted around the slave trade, Shockoe Bottom, and the entrepreneurs of Jackson Ward.
“There was a period between the end of slavery and the beginning of entrepreneurship that went into different horizons,” Baskerville said.
“And one of those horizons was the development of a significant African American medical community. That needs to be lifted up just as much as all other markers of African American history.”
Ann-Frances Lambert, council member for Richmond’s 3rd District, has been a supporter of efforts to save Richmond Community Hospital. She says a meeting is forthcoming between the group trying to save the hospital and Virginia Union University.
“A meeting is being scheduled between union and the individuals who want to save the hospital. So they can hear the process of what union is going to take in regards to rehabbing and repurposing it,” Lambert said. “We’re all trying to work together on keeping the building and making sure it stays rehabbed.”
Elliott Rouillard is a new resident of Frederick Douglass Court who lives within sight of the hospital. While only a resident for the past two years, he displays a sign in his front yard calling to save the historic building and wants to see it continue on.
“For me I see it and think it’s a beautiful building, but also I have the understand that for a lot of my neighbors who have been here a lot longer than myself, it was a place where they received medical care and a lot of them were born,” Rouillard said.
“I think that needs to be highlighted and that history shouldn’t be lost in tearing it down.”
Richmond Times-Dispatch reporter Em Holter contributed to this story.
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From the Archives: 250 photos of Richmond in the 1940s
Belle Isle
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Ice
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Sean Jones (804) 649-6911
sjones@timesdispatch.com
Twitter: @SeanJones_RTD
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Sean Jones
Youth Issues/Families and Education reporter, Henrico and Hanover Counties Reporter
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