For months I’ve been taking Leigh street to and from work because of the work on Belvedere. It wasn’t until the leaves came off the trees last fall that I noticed a sign up in an oak tree. The sign sits at the corner of Leigh and Harrison very near to Carver Elementary. The sign appears to be hand-painted and old. The oak tree obscures it when in full leaf. The sign has a design and two distinctly visible Hs. I have been trying to figure out what HH stands for. I ran through all the community names I knew and none of them matched. I asked older people who have lived in the city surrounds for more years than they’d care to admit. And no one had a clue. I guess I wasn’t asking the right people.
The other day I had to make a long looping U-turn through the neighborhood with the HH sign and low and behold there are lots of little signs that say Hartshorn Community (and in my defense this isn’t the best of neighborhoods so I don’t veer off the main drag). I used The Google and found out a wealth of information about the Hartshorn community.
From Wikipedia:
Virginia Union University is an historically black university located in Richmond, Virginia. It was founded in 1865 by the American Baptist Home Mission Society. From 1867 to 1870, Union, then known as Clover Institute, was housed in a former “slave jail” owned by Mrs. Mary Ann Lumpkin, the African-American widow of the deceased white owner. In 1899, the Richmond Theological Institute (formerly Clover Institute) joined with Wayland Seminary of Washington, D.C. to form Virginia Union University. In 1932, Hartshorn Memorial College for Women, established in Richmond, Virginia in 1883, became a part of Virginia Union University.
Hartshorn Memorial College was a college created to educate African-American women. The plan was to set the college up in the same manner as Wellesley College. The first classes met in the basement of Ebenezer Baptist Church. The church is still there and I drive past it frequently.
And from a VCU document about the history of the Carver area:
In 1962, the final phase of the Carver plan was implemented with additional clearance of deteriorated properties north of Leigh Street by the RRHA and then construction of the ninety-eight unit Hartshorn Home community by private developers. This ranch style housing
development offered affordable housing and also a community room and swimming pool. The homes, located north of West Leigh Street between Harrison and Bowe streets, were also close to both the G.W. Carver and Maggie Walker schools. The Hartshorn community had the distinction of being the first of its kind to be insured by the Federal Home Administration.footnote: Richmond Times Dispatch, 6 January 1963. The Viking Development Corporation of Norfolk, Virginia and the Reynolds Aluminum Service Corporation of Richmond built Hartshorn homes. Homes initially sold for $11,500. Also Richmond Redevelopment and Housing Authority, “The Carver Conservation and Redevelopment Area,†Staff Report, (Richmond, February 1999).
It’s fascinating to me because I’ve lived in the Richmond area my whole life and I never knew about this piece of information. It brings the whole issue of race that plagues this town into stark relief.