Taking its name from its eastern boundary, the West of The Boulevard Historic District is an extensive, primarily residential Richmond neighborhood encompassing some sixty-nine blocks and over 1,700 contributing buildings. Laid out on level fields of what was then Henrico County farmland, the district developed rapidly from 1895 to 1943, a period of intense economic growth. The straight, tree-shaded streets are lined mainly with attached two-story brick town houses, most of which have front porches. Great variety is achieved within this formula: styles include Tudor, Craftsman, and Mediterranean, although modified Georgian predominates. Interspersed among the mostly middle-class houses are a number of distinctly Richmond three-story apartment blocks with galleried porticoes. The majority of buildings within the West of The Boulevard Historic District date from 1910 to 1930, when real estate corporations and building firms such as Muhleman and Kayhoe and Davis Brother, Inc. began developing whole blocks. Anchored by the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts campus and the Virginia Museum of History and Culture (the former Virginia Historical Society) along its eastern edge, several churches and schools also highlight the district, which is now commonly referred to as the Museum District. Two smaller districts, listed in the registers, are located within the West of The Boulevard Historic District’s boundaries: English Village on the west end of Grove Avenue, and the Twenty-Nine Hundred Block Grove Avenue Historic District, on the east end.
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