Monroe Park

1851
Bounded by Belvidere, Franklin, Laurel, and Main Streets

Monroe Park is among the most prominent public spaces in Richmond. It sits at the nexus of the Fan District, Monroe Ward, and Belvidere Street, a busy thoroughfare that extends over nearby highways and deep into the north and south sides. For residents of many city neighborhoods, the park is both a gathering place and a crossroads. 

Although considered central today, Monroe Park began in 1851 as a fairground on what was then Richmond’s far-flung western edge. It became the city’s first public park in 1853, and it has undergone many changes since as paths, plantings, statuary and the grand central fountain were added. Its character is utterly unlike the extraordinary and untamed banks of the James River – it is an urban room in which surrounding facades provide a sense of enclosure. VCU’s recently completed Gladding Residence Hall, on the south side of the park, fills in another side of this enclosure. The park’s east side remains unresolved, and assaulted by the noise of speeding cars on Belvidere Street. 

In 2018, the park reopened after a major renovation led by 3 North Architects and the Monroe Park Conservancy, a civic group founded in 2003. The renovation proved controversial, with proponents arguing that the neglected park needed an overhaul and opponents raising concerns about the loss of tree canopy and the displacement of the park’s sizable homeless population. Controversy returned in the summer of 2020, when a statue of Confederate general Williams Carter Wickham was toppled by protesters following the murder of George Floyd. 

Monroe Park, a site of frequent political demonstrations, is a space of public engagement as well as respite. This isn’t due to any feature of its design – in fact the axial arrangement of paths divides the park, making it difficult for large groups to occupy. The strength of Monroe Park, like most great urban spaces, is in its proximity to other things. Monroe Park is flanked by Virginia Commonwealth University’s main campus, public and religious institutions like the Altria Theatre and the Cathedral of Sacred Heart, and apartments, offices and shops. Like Philadelphia’s Rittenhouse Square or Boston’s Copley Square, the diversity of uses and populations surrounding Monroe Park give the space its vitality. As more of the vast parking lots and empty spaces in the surrounding neighborhoods are filled in, the importance of Monroe Park in the civic life of Richmond will only grow. 

DOK

Photography generously provided by Tom Skora