Richmond's Monument Avenue

Richmond's Monument Avenue

ReviewSumptuously illustrated with photographs by John O. Peters, this wonderful work narrates and celebrates Monument Avenue's role as shrine to Confederate heroes and as showcase of turn-of-the-century Richmond's finest homes. . . . Richmond's Monument Avenue is not so much a photographic journey through a Southern city's past, but a metaphoric meditation on the past and how we Americans choose, then venerate our heroes. It's an exercise worthy of all of us.--Blue & Gray MagazineLong hailed as a supreme example of American city planning, Monument Avenue is home to some of Richmond, Virginia's, most prestigious houses and distinguished architecture--and to the unique procession of statues from which the street takes its name. Initially planned in 1890 around a memorial to Robert E. Lee, over the next four decades the avenue evolved into a parade of statues honoring heroes of the Confederacy. In the mid-1990s, however, the dedication of a controversial memorial to African American tennis player Arthur Ashe signaled that Monument Avenue's meaning had broadened beyond commemorating the Lost Cause.This book traces the history of Monument Avenue, of its buildings and statuary, and of the people who helped create one of America's great streets. Enriched by more than three hundred photographs, plans, and drawings, it chronicles the avenue's development, captures architectural details and city preservation efforts, and places the avenue's story in local, regional, and national context.Built to reflect the hopes and attitudes of Richmonders at the turn of the last century, Monument Avenue exists nearly intact today as the centerpiece of a flourishing neighborhood, even as its meaning continues to be redefined.ReviewThis lavishly illustrated coffee-table book offers in-depth looks at the statues and the grand houses of the neighborhood. ("America's Civil War")This fine study of Monument Avenue is a splendid illustration of how such solid scholarship on a narrow subject can yield important understanding of much larger topics. ("Virginia Quarterly Review")A major contribution to Richmond history and US architecture and sculpture scholarship. ("Choice")This large pictorial and narrative history is, in a word, superlative, both for its study of urban design and for its attention to historical detail. ("Richmond Times-Dispatch")Virtually every page of "Richmond's Monument Avenue" gives evidence of how the Confederate capital's statue-lined thoroughfare has reflected changes in Richmond, and in the South as a whole, since its conception in the 1880s. ("American Heritage")About the AuthorSarah Shields Driggs is an independent architectural historian and consultant who lives in Richmond.Richard Guy Wilson is chair and Commonwealth Professor of Architectural History at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville.Robert P. Winthrop is an architect in Farmville, Virginia.