AKA Western Square, Old Fairgrounds

620 West Main Street

Created, 1851

VDHR 127-0383

Now hear this: Monroe Park is beautiful.

Monroe Park is situated on land acquired in 1851 by the City of Richmond. Planned to serve as a park for the stylish western suburbs. It was first used for the site of an agricultural exposition and later as a camp site for Confederate troops before being developed for recreational use in the 1870s.

With the rapid growth of the western suburbs of Richmond at the turn of the 20th century, the park provided an ideal setting for the monumental Gothic Grace and Holy Trinity Church, the Italian Renaissance Cathedral of the Sacred Heart, and the Moorish Mosque Auditorium.

These buildings, along with several late 19th-century townhouses which recall the earlier residential character of the park, and two impressive apartment houses of the 1920s, create an architectural ensemble which is unique in Virginia for its monumental character and stylistic diversity.

In 1850 the only public park in Richmond was Capitol Square. With a population of 30,280 at that time, this single open space was no longer sufficient for the growing city’s needs, and in. 1851, city councilman Charles Dimmock proposed that parks be acquired near future major residential areas. In 1851-52, seven and one-half acres of land were purchased to become Western Square. This square would later become Monroe Park.

The site being beyond the city limits and to the west of developed residential areas, the park was not developed for two decades. In 1854 the property was used by the Virginia State Agricultural Society for a fair. The fair was vis±ed by President John Tyler and General Winfield Scott and was celebrated as a major civic event in the antebellum period.

By the late 1870s residential development had expanded to the west, and the park was indicated on maps of the period with an arrangement of curved paths, similar to those in Capitol Square. By 1889, this original scheme had been replaced by the present configuration of straight walks. The central feature of this design was a tall, granite, rustic pyramid from the apex of which water gushed. The pyramid was similar to the memorial erected to Confederate dead in Hollywood Cemetery in 1869.

The Monroe Park feature was surmounted by a metal pipe structure supporting an electric light. Adjacent to this odd pyramid was a wooden bandstand. In the first decade of the 20th century the pyramid was replaced with a four-tier, castiron fountain cast by J.W. Fiske. In 1971, the fountain was recast by the Robinson Company. The bandstand was replaced by the Checkers House in 1939.

Serving as a residential square from the later 19th century into. the first part of the 20th century, the park by 1930 was surrounded by high rise apartments and major public buildings and churches. As the area aged it became less stylish as a residential neighborhood and the Richmond Professional Institute, the forerunner of Virginia Commonwealth University, expanded into the older houses of the area.

By the later 1950s the residential character of the district was lost, and several proposals were made to destroy the park by extending streets through it, converting it to parking space, or erecting a medical center on the site. These proposals were all rejected and the park remains a major public amenity today.

As was typical of 19th-century practice, the park became a site for monumental sculpture. The foundation for a huge rotunda dedicated to Jefferson Davis was laid in the park in the 1890s, but this impressive scheme was abandoned in favor of a more modest monument erected on Monument Avenue.

A bronze statue of General William c. Wickham was dedicated in 1891, and in 1911 a monument to Joseph Bryan was unveiled. Smaller monuments to Fitzhugh Lee and the dead of World War II were erected in the later 20th century. Only the Wickham Statue was related to the park’s axial plan. (VDHR)

By the early 2010s, the park was showing its age needed more than just TLC. It was closed to the public in 2017 and underwent a 22-month, 6 million dollar restoration that improved security, added a bioretention wall to make it self-sustaining, 132 new trees, 13,000 new shrubs and plants, and wi-fi (WTVR). A project of that size and duration will always have fault-finders, but on the whole, the Monroe Park Conservancy and the city did good.

(Monroe Park is part of the Atlas RVA! Project)

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