I was in Richmond two weeks ago for a wedding. When not being social, I was out taking pictures. While prepping those pictures I remembered that I had more photos of Richmond from a brief trip there last summer that I never got around to making public, so I combined the two sets into one big one.
Actually there are 5 sets, organized by location or topic. You can access them
via flick if you want to see them all.
A selection is below.
If you don't know, although it's famous for being the capital of the Confederacy, Richmond is structurally a mid-Atlantic city. Urbanistically it shares much more in common with Washington, Baltimore and Harrisburg than the Carolina cities to its south. Although not as dense as its northern cousins, Richmond has a large downtown and extensive rowhouse/multifamily neighborhoods.
Let's move to pictures. I don't have any skyline overview type shots, so instead we'll start with my hotel from two weeks ago. We stayed at the Doubletree, which is west of downtown not quite all the way to The Fan. It had a rooftop pool.
... With a view.
Downtown. Richmond hasn't gentrified very much yet, so downtown is a mixed bag of glitzy office towers, restored historic rows, and 20th Century neglect.
The James River flows through the city. On the downtown side there is an old industrial canal, which has been turned into a park. It's quite pleasant.
Oh hai, State House.
There is a variety of statues on the State House grounds. By far the most impressive is this one of Virginia native son George Washington.
Of course it wouldn't be Richmond without some Confederate generals. This one is Stonewall Jackson.
To the state's credit, they have tried to balance out some of the historic negativity with more honorable contemporary monuments, like this one memorializing the civil rights movements of the 1960s.
The Governor's Mansion.
I love me a water feature.
Shockoe Bottom is the neighborhood immediately east of downtown. It's historic and warehousy.
All right, now let's head the other way. This is The Fan, Richmond's most famous neighborhood. With such a variety of colorful rowhouses, it deserves the accolade.
The next neighborhood west of The Fan is Carytown, which isn't as beautiful but has a fun shopping district.
You can see in some pictures that storefronts have been added to older rowhouses.
Yes, in case you are wondering. The urban cupcake phenomenon has reached Richmond.
The owner of this store is a crazy hippie anarchist who thinks the main problem with America today is that too many people vote (yes you read that right: too *many*), and is in complete denial about the extremely high likelihood that he would be put up against a wall and shot about 5 minutes after a petty warlord took over the anarchist utopia about which he dreams.
But at least his store was funny.
It's typically my tradition to include a lot of transit pictures with city threads. Unfortunately, Richmond's transit system is awful. If you're on Broad Street then buses are a reasonable option, but otherwise you better have a car.
Here's your basic bus.
Some of them are adorned with this sticker. I assume the standards by which APTA judges "best" are with regards to administration and organization rather than service, because honestly, the transit system sucks.
I traveled to/from Richmond via Amtrak from DC. Richmond has two stations.
Here is Staples Mill station, the larger of the two. It's probably one of the larger and more well-equipped AmShacks in the country, but it is definitely an AmShack. Like most of its peers, it is located out in the industrial nether lands of the suburbs, surrounded by plenty of parking.
Ugh. As you can see, I didn't bother getting off the train.
Then you have Main Street Station, which is right downtown. One of Richmond's vintage depots, Main Street Station was recently restored and has been poaching customers from Staples Mill ever since. Unfortunately it isn't served by as many trains as Staples Mill, so it hasn't caught up yet.
It is completely gorgeous.
Gorgeous yes, but also small. Here is the main waiting room. There are bathrooms and vending machines, but the lack of shops or restaurants is a bummer.
One cool thing is that its train shed is still in tact.
Unfortunately, the shed is closed off. Not enough demand. Instead, trains use the outside tracks and just stop by the side of the building.
That's all!
Watch for threads from me from Charlotte and Greenville later in the week.