Church Hill’s cobblestone streets and mélange of neatly preserved architectural styles spanning the last two centuries evoke misty images of tobacco and shipping magnates, colonials and secessionists. But it wasn’t just the history of the neighborhood, built on a promontory above the James River in the 1740s, that attracted Baskerville. “These houses were slick and modern when they were built,” he says. “They worked pretty well for contemporary life.” And, he adds, they still do.
The design of the row is attributed to Otis Manson, a builder-architect originally from New England. He was commissioned by three sons of Ann Adams Carrington, whose home was around the corner at 2306 E. Grace St., to build the three houses, the earliest known row houses built in Richmond. Dr. R.L. Bohannon, one of the founders of the Medical College of Virginia, was one of the row’s early owners; he lived at 2309 in the 1840s.
Fast-forward to the 1950s, and the whole of Church Hill had deteriorated, Carrington Row along with it. The Historic Richmond Foundation came to the rescue. In the 1960s, it purchased the three houses as part of what was known as the Carrington Square “Pilot Block,” an ambitious plan to restore the block bounded by 23rd and 24th streets and East Broad and East Grace streets. A dramatic moment occurred during the restoration when, in 1964, as city workers were drilling to connect the sewer line to the basement, the entire façade of 2309 slid down in one piece. It was re-secured, and today this the only house of the three that looks as it did in 1818, the other two having made additions to their front porches in later years.
An artist with a degree in art history from the University of Virginia, Baskerville’s work has appeared in exhibitions with contemporary artists like Robert Rauschenberg and Clive Head. Yet he comes by his interest in architecture naturally. He is the grandson of Henry Coleman Baskerville, an architect, and the great-grandson of Henry Eugene Baskervill (who dropped the “e” from his surname), an engineer and founder in 1897 of Baskervill, a Richmond-based architecture firm whose notable early projects include a 1903 addition to the Virginia State Capitol Building and work on Major James H. Dooley’s Maymont in Richmond.
Latest Comments