From the Richmond Times-Dispatch, 7/5/1910, p. 16, c. 3

COLLEGE TRACT AS PUBLIC PARK
Council Not Highly in Favor of Buying Richmond College Property.
SUGGESTS EAST END SITE
Growing Movement to Make Park More Free to the People.

Councilmen generally do not take favorably to the proposition of purchasing the present Richmond College tract for a city park. The tract soon to be vacated by the college when it moves to its newly purchased home at Westhampton, embraces four large city blocks, bounded by Broad, Ryland, Franklin and Lombardy Streets, and is in some respects beautifully situated, the upper end marking the beginning of the city’s most beautiful thoroughfare, Monument Avenue, and the site of the monument to Major-Gen. J. E. B. Stuart. No exact value has been fixed on the plat in question, but it lies in the most highly improved residential section of the city. With the old buildings removed and Grace Street opened through, the college authorities expect to sell it off in lots for a sufficient sum to pay a large part of the cost of the proposed new buildings. In fact, for years the trustees have complained that the college was “sitting down on the most valuable part of its endowment,” the college campus.

Reasons For and Against.

In favor of the proposition to purchase the tract as a park it is argued that it is practically all open; that it may be acquired without the demolishing of expensive buildings as would be the case in buying park property elsewhere, and that the growing residential section of the West End will soon demand additional park space, as all vacant lots are being built over, and less of open breating room is left.

Against the proposition it is held that Monroe Park is but three or four blocks away; that Monument Avenue itself is practically a park, and that the prosperous residential section of the western end of the city does not need additional park space to so great a degree as do the poorer sections of the city. Residents of Lee District, as a rule, go away from Richmond for the summer, while among people of lesser means the parks afford the only breathing spaces the year round for both grown people and children.

As an alternate to the proposition to purchase the Richmond College tract, it has been suggested that the city acquire the old Van Lew property on Church Hill, and make it an annex to what is now known as Taylor’s Hill Park. With but little alteration the grounds of the famous old mansion lend themselves to the purposes of a public park, and whether the house is left standing as a landmark or removed, the grounds would afford a most admirable park for a section which is now served only by a steep terraced hillside purchased by the city largely because it could be used for no other purpose.

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