The Hickory Hill School sits in the city of Richmond’s Southside area, in what once was Chesterfield County. The school was built in 1938 for African American students on the same property as two earlier schools and a shop building; the 1915 frame school and the 1925 Rosenwald School and shop building are no longer extant. Hickory Hill School served generations of Black students as the county’s only training school during 20th-century segregation in Virginia’s public school system. As the county’s first brick school for African Americans, its construction and subsequent expansion in 1958 embodied the Black community’s efforts to provide equal educational opportunities and facilities for their children during Jim Crow. The Hickory Hill School closed in 1969, and the building was repurposed to serve as a community center.
Many properties listed in the registers are private dwellings and are not open to the public, however many are visible from the public right-of-way. Please be respectful of owner privacy.
Abbreviations:
VLR: Virginia Landmarks Register
NPS: National Park Service
NRHP: National Register of Historic Places
NHL: National Historic Landmark
Programs
DHR has secured permanent legal protection for over 700 historic places - including 15,000 acres of battlefield lands
DHR has erected 2,532 highway markers in every county and city across Virginia
DHR has registered more than 3,317 individual resources and 613 historic districts
DHR has engaged over 450 students in 3 highway marker contests
DHR has stimulated more than $4.2 billion dollars in private investments related to historic tax credit incentives, revitalizing communities of all sizes throughout Virginia