Inside

In 1956, HRF’s initial restoration efforts focused on Grace Street, between 23rd and 24th streets—which came to be known as the Pilot Block. The Pollard house (governor John Garland Pollard’s childhood home) was the first to be renovated, after which Doris and Max Marshall bought it and moved in. (They live there today.) The Crumley sisters moved to the opposite end of the block, into the Federal-style Hilary Baker home renovated by Mrs. Scott. Marguerite Crumley, who wrote the book on Church Hill history in 1991 with HRF’s Jack Zehmer, passed away in 2000; Carol and Rose Marie still live there.

The 1960s denizens of Church Hill were a very small group scattered on both sides of 25th Street. The Sisters of the Poor at Monte Maria (now Richmond Hill) were said to have been attuned to neighborhood doings even though they were cloistered. According to Carol Crumley, only one of the sisters ever left the compound except for election day 1960, when all of them turned out to vote for John Kennedy. A supper club opened at 2300 E. Broad St. in 1964, outfitted with antiques donated by the Shop on Church Hill across the street. In 1973, the 2300 Club moved to a suite of four buildings on Grace Street renovated by Mr. Fleet. In 1996, 30 years after he’d bought the Yarbrough house, Fleet sold it to Polly Cole. By then, an upscale stereo equipment store was operating on the main floor and basement. Cole brought the house back to a single family residence, then sold it to the Rawlses in 2005.

Waite and Malou grew up in separate parts of Virginia (he in Franklin, she in Norfolk), then met in Virginia Beach when they were in the ninth grade. They dated all the way through college and then got married. The couple lived for years in New York and Chicago, where Waite was an executive for Chemical Bank and Continental Bank while Malou (a childhood nickname contracted from Margaret Louise) worked at ABC News and at Backer & Spielvogel, a Madison Avenue ad firm. After three decades away, they were both homesick for Virginia—but not for a suburban lifestyle. “I didn’t want a single blade of grass growing intentionally,” says Waite.

The move back was predicated on a career change for Waite, who in 2004 accepted a position running the Museum of the Confederacy. “They needed a turnaround,” says Waite. Under his tenure, the museum has announced plans to open three additional locations around the state. Rawls’ plan is to take the museum to the people rather than expect them to come to the museum. Perhaps he was inspired to effect change by his first trip to the MOC, at age 9: “The staff scared the bejesus out of me with their ‘don’t get your fingerprints on Robert E. Lee’s uniform,’” recalls Waite. “It was all old-timey wood cases with glass lids inside the White House of the Confederacy.