Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, May 13, 1990 TAG: 9005130296
SECTION: HORIZON PAGE: F-7 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: RICHMOND LENGTH: Medium
The friend also told them the neighborhood was very conservative, so it came as no surprise that when the Lewises planted a 10-foot-tall steel clothespin in their front yard, "it caused a stir," Frances Lewis recalls. Never mind that the clothespin was made by Claes Oldenburg and now is considered a famous work of art.
Things like that just weren't done on Monument Avenue, a boulevard that has been variously praised as "the Champs-Elysees of the South" and "the most beautiful street in America."
Nonetheless, Richmond and its famous avenue have accepted a number of new ideas in the 100 years since a bronzed, heroic-sized statue of a bareheaded man astride a horse facing south, inscribed only with the letters LEE, was pulled into place before 20,000 adoring citizens.
Not so long ago the only acceptable uses of the circular tract surrounding the monument were the seemingly monthly tributes to the Confederacy, re-enacted by musket-bearing young men marching in silent respect.
These days the area is more likely to be filled with children and dogs and Frisbees and footballs and - although there is still some objection - sunbathers.
Edwin J. Slipek Jr., director of "Monument Avenue Alive," a year-long centennial that celebrates the unveiling of the statue, said Richmonders are "passionate about remembering" and that the Lee Monument is the "psychic heart" of what has become an outdoor museum of public sculpture.
But Monument Avenue is "more than a Confederate Valhalla," according to Slipek. "It's a linear Central Park or town square, tracking the development of an American city." Slipek said that parts or all of some of the great American thoroughfares, such as Euclid Avenue in Cleveland, have experienced hard times, but that Monument Avenue, with the exception of a 1950s one-story physician's office and a couple of apartment buildings in need of paint, has retained its grandeur.
A typical Monument Avenue house contains 5,000 square feet, half a dozen fireplaces, four bathrooms, maid's quarters, a dozen rooms on three floors and perhaps a carriage house in the rear. Most of the houses were built between 1905 and 1935.
As the original occupants died off, the houses were sold to new owners who often found them too large and too expensive to maintain. Many have been converted into doctors' and lawyers' offices, bed-and-breakfasts and apartments.
The architect who made the greatest impact on the one-mile thoroughfare was William Lawrence Bottomley, whose Richmond houses are the subject of a coffee-table book that is popular among homeowners on the avenue, which is in the "Virginia Historic Register" and the "National Register of Historic Places."
Bottomley, whose best-known work probably is the River House, a Beaux-Arts Manhattan apartment building, worked in Richmond between 1915 and 1930. His seven houses offer a variety of styles, from Georgian to Mediterranean. Bottomley's Stuart Court Apartments was staffed by doormen in pink jackets and had eight rooms for maids in the basement. Today it is crammed with students from Virginia Commonwealth University, whose campus is a few blocks away.
While some of the grand houses are occupied by descendants of the First Families of Virginia (FFVs in local parlance) - 2-year-old Coleman Wortham IV is growing up in a Bottomley house built for his great-grandparents - much of a recent restoration boom has been fueled by newcomers who have jumped at the chance to buy a mansion for what is a subdivision price in Washington or New York. Ceci Amrhein, a real estate broker who also is co-chairman of the centennial, said a house in need of major renovation is on the market for $250,000, while one completely renovated - "it took five heat pumps," she said, sold recently for $775,000.
Amrhein's co-chair, Millie Jones, and her husband, Tom, a local judge, paid $118,000 in 1978 for a 27-bed nursing home originally designed as a house by Duncan Lee, who is considered "one of Virginia's two most famous architects - the other being Jefferson."
by CNB