Monument Avenue

An illustrated history of Richmond, Virginia's Monument Avenue, showing the most prestigious homes and distinguished architecture, as well as the statues that have often been a source of controversy.

Originally a tribute to Robert E. Lee, Richmond's Monument Avenue grew to its zenith in the early twentieth century as a place of wealth and privilege. Richmond native and child of Monument Avenue Patricia Hass has collected the loving memories of those who shared a childhood among the River City's elite. These pages are filled with recollections of warm afternoons playing in the shadows of the monuments and visits to neighborhood institutions such as Reuben's Deli and the Capitol Theatre. While the children played, their families entertained famous houseguests such as David Niven, Lord and Lady Astor and Winston Churchill. Enter each historic home along the avenue and travel back to a time now lost to memory.

This pictorial of the Avenue, and other removed monuments, was compiled prior to the 2020 protests and removal efforts. It is my sincere hope that these images preserve the fond memories of the city for those lucky enough to have seen them before the destruction, and gives a glimpse into the beauty that was once Monument Avenue for those that never had the opportunity to visit.

This richly illustrated collection of fourteen essays examines the ways in which Confederate memorials - from Monument Avenue to Stone Mountain - and the public rituals surrounding them testify to the tenets of the Lost Cause, a romanticized narrative of the war. Several essays highlight the creative leading role played by women's groups in memorialization, while others explore the alternative ways in which people outside white southern culture wrote their very different histories on the southern landscape. The authors - who include Richard Guy Wilson, Catherine W. Bishir, W. Fitzhugh Brundage, and William M.S. Ramussen - trace the origins, objectives, and changing consequences of Confederate monuments over time and the dynamics of individuals and organizations that sponsored them. Thus these essays extend the growing literature on the rhetoric of the Lost Cause by shifting the focus to the realm of the visual. They are especially relevant in the present day when Confederate symbols and monuments continue to play a central role in a public - and often emotionally charged - debate about how the South's past should be remembered. The editors: Art Historian Cynthia Mills, a specialist in nineteenth-century public sculpture, is executive editor of American Art, the scholarly journal of the Smithsonian American Art Museum. Pamela H. Simpson is the Ernest Williams II Professor of Art History at Washington and Lee University. She is the coauthor of The Architecture of Historic Lexington.

Landscape and Race in the United States is the definitive volume on racialized landscapes in the United States. Edited by Richard Schein, each essay is grounded in a particular location but all of the essays are informed by the theoretical vision that the cultural landscapes of America are infused with race and America's racial divide. While featuring the black/white divide, the book also investigates other social landscapes including Chinatowns, Latino landscapes in the Southwest and white suburban landscapes. The essays are accessible and readable providing historical and contemporary coverage.

Ed: SUNY, Buffalo, Revised papers from two conferences, 1992 and 1993.