In Richmond’s Shockoe Bottom, at the corner of 16th and East Broad streets, there is a small, untidy, white brick building once occupied by a sandwich shop called The Daily Grind.
Team Henry Enterprises, a Norfolk-based, Black-owned construction firm, has been selected by the Shockoe Institute Foundation to turn the ground floor of the Main Street Station into a welcome and interpretive center. Also, New Orleans-based musician Leyla McCalla has been hired as the founding artistic director of the Shockoe Institute.
Isn’t the ground floor in the floodplain? And won’t we lose the best views? If these questions wrack your brain, you are not alone, but there are reasons.
By late summer, a refined design concept for the Shockoe Hill African Burying Ground Memorial will be advertised for public review. The whole packet, including cost estimates, will be submitted to the City of Richmond’s authentiCITY Studio, concluding the current contract with the Baskervill design firm.
$33 million has been committed from the city of Richmond and the state of Virginia for the launch of the Shockoe Project, the working title for the 10-acre memorial park to be constructed on the site of what once was the epicenter of the U.S. domestic slave trade.
Despite the threat of a thunderstorm, about 60 people turned out today for a profoundly moving event marking the 224th anniversary of Gabriel’s Rebellion. The gathering was held at Spring Park in Henrico County, just outside Richmond, where the historic uprising was initially planned.
Emily Winfree’s cottage, situated in 1866 in the town of Manchester on the south side of the James River, was saved from demolition in 2002 by being relocated to Shockoe Bottom. Since 2007, however, the small house has been sitting on steel I-beams next to the Lumpkin’s Jail Archaeology site, steadily deteriorating.
The Virginia Defender 