Within this one block of Franklin Street is perhaps the city of Richmond’s most diverse concentration of 19th-century domestic architecture. Except for two demolitions, the 200 Block West Franklin Street Historic District has changed little since before World War I, when it was one of the city’s best addresses. The ca. 1800 Cole Diggs house is the earliest in the group and is now the headquarters of Preservation Virginia (formerly the Association for the Preservation of Virginia Antiquities). An outstanding work of the Eastlake style is the ca. 1886 T. Seddon Bruce house, designed by M. J. Dimmock. Finally, a beautiful example of the French Renaissance mode is the 1896 Carter-Mayo house by Carrere and Hastings. The block was rescued from threatened development in 1977 by the Historic Richmond Foundation, and six of the properties are protected by historic preservation easements held by the DHR’s Board of Historic Resources.

The 200 Block West Franklin Street Historic District was expanded in 1994 to include Main Street’s Queen Anne Row. All of the buildings have since been rehabilitated.
[VLR Listing 8/17/1994; NRHP Listing 10/21/1994]