Union Hill is a historic district of Richmond,

Virginia Virginia, officially the Commonwealth of Virginia, is a state in the Mid-Atlantic and Southeastern regions of the United States, between the Atlantic Coast and the Appalachian Mountains. The geography and climate of the Commonwealth are ...

. According to the ''

Richmond Times Dispatch The ''Richmond Times-Dispatch'' (''RTD'' or ''TD'' for short) is the primary daily newspaper in Richmond, the capital of Virginia, and the primary newspaper of record for the state of Virginia. Circulation The ''Times-Dispatch'' has the second- ...

'', the neighborhood "generally is bordered on the south by East Marshall Street and Jefferson Avenue, on the west by Mosby Street, on the north by O and Carrington streets, and angled on the east by North 25th Street."Carol Hazard
Richmond's Union Hill neighborhood centerstage for thorny issues associated with development
''Richmond Times-Dispatch'' (May 7, 2017). The neighborhood is on the

Virginia Landmarks Register The Virginia Landmarks Register (VLR) is a list of historic properties in the Commonwealth of Virginia. The state's official list of important historic sites, it was created in 1966. The Register serves the same purpose as the National Registe ...

and the

National Register of Historic Places The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is the United States federal government's official list of districts, sites, buildings, structures and objects deemed worthy of preservation for their historical significance or "great artistic ...

, and is also one of sixteen designated "Old and Historic Districts" in Richmond.

History

Street grading in the late 19th and early 20th centuries joined two hills, giving the neighborhood its name. The neighborhood is largely

working class The working class (or labouring class) comprises those engaged in manual-labour occupations or industrial work, who are remunerated via waged or salaried contracts. Working-class occupations (see also " Designation of workers by collar colo ...

and has historically been mixed race. A series of

white flight White flight or white exodus is the sudden or gradual large-scale migration of white people from areas becoming more racially or ethnoculturally diverse. Starting in the 1950s and 1960s, the terms became popular in the United States. They ref ...

and then black flight led to a high proportion of neglected or abandoned properties in the area by the 1990s. City government responded with crime-reduction and blight-removal projects; efforts to demolish abandoned properties in the district were opposed by the Alliance to Conserve Old Richmond Neighborhoods, a historic preservationist group. Redevelopment intensified in the 2010s. The Union Hill Historic District was added to the Virginia Landmarks Register in December 2001 and to the

in December 2002.

Geography and architecture

Union Hill lies to the north of Church Hill. The architecture of the neighborhood varies, with buildings in the Federal,

Greek Revival The Greek Revival was an architectural movement which began in the middle of the 18th century but which particularly flourished in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, predominantly in northern Europe and the United States and Canada, but a ...

Italianate The Italianate style was a distinct 19th-century phase in the history of Classical architecture. Like Palladianism and Neoclassicism, the Italianate style drew its inspiration from the models and architectural vocabulary of 16th-century Italia ...

, Queen Anne, and

Art Deco Art Deco, short for the French ''Arts Décoratifs'', and sometimes just called Deco, is a style of visual arts, architecture, and product design, that first appeared in France in the 1910s (just before World War I), and flourished in the Unite ...

styles.National Register of Historic Places nomination form
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References

External links

{{National Register of Historic Places in Virginia Historic districts on the National Register of Historic Places in Virginia Federal architecture in Virginia National Register of Historic Places in Richmond, Virginia Neighborhoods in Richmond, Virginia Greek Revival architecture in Virginia Hills of Richmond, Virginia