While a relatively small city, Richmond holds its own with much bigger cities where architecture is concerned. While Richmond’s long and storied history as an American city has done a lot to give it such a rich architectural landscape, it’s be unfair to say that the city’s history has only done good things for the city skyline; after all, the Evacuation Fire of 1865, set by retreating Confederate soldiers in the last days of the Civil War, left 9/10 of the city’s business district in ruins. That was actually the 2nd time Richmond was burned to the ground, the first being in the Raid on Richmond, January 5th 1781, kicking off The Revolutionary War.
Perhaps that sort of history is what leads to an odd fact about Richmond’s oldest buildings: all of them were originally located elsewhere. Today, the city’s oldest buildings are located in Windsor Farms, an early-20th century planned community intended to resemble an English country village. Although, in all honesty, everyone in that village would have to be very rich, as this is one of the regions wealthiest areas, with some of the largest homes in the area.These historic transplants include Virginia House, a reconstruction of two 15th century English houses, and Agecroft Hall, a 15th century English Tudor house. Both were imported to Richmond at the end of the Roaring Twenties, only months before the stock market crash of 1929. The intricate landscaping of both houses, which neighbor one another, was undertaken in the 1930s by famous Southern landscape architect Charles Gillette, who later redesigned the gardens of Virginia’s Executive Mansion and Reynolds Metals Company’s headquarters, among many others. All played a prominent role in Gillette’s establishment of the Virginia Garden style of landscape architecture, and lent to his overall fame.
By contrast, the oldest original building in Richmond is much more modest: the “Old Stone House” was constructed sometime between 1740 and 1754, in the first years of Richmond’s original street grid. It is a small colonial structure made of granite, originally built by German immigrant Joseph Ege. It now houses Richmond’s Edgar Allan Poe Museum; that said, Edgar Allan Poe never actually lived there. The fact that Richmond contains quite a few buildings of this vintage makes it a significantly older city, architecturally speaking, than many larger, more well-regarded cities around the United States.
Perhaps more telling, even than the great houses of Richmond, are the incredible estates and historic buildings that still stand in the surrounding counties. Rural Plains—also known as Shelton House—Blandford Church, Shirley Plantation, St. John’s Episcopal, Wilton House, Eppington, and Battersea are all remarkably old, each reflecting a different chapter of Virginia’s early architectural and social history.
Rural Plains, in Hanover County, was built around 1723 and sits at the heart of the Totopotomoy Creek battlefield site. It’s believed to be the only surviving structure from that Civil War engagement and offers a close look at colonial-era construction. Blandford Church, in Petersburg, dates to 1735 and is most famous for its stunning collection of stained-glass windows designed by Louis Comfort Tiffany, each one representing a different Confederate state.
Shirley Plantation, in Charles City County, has been continuously operated by the same family since the 1600s and is considered the oldest active plantation in Virginia. It retains much of its original Georgian architecture and still functions as both a working farm and a historic house museum. In the Church Hill neighborhood of Richmond, St. John’s Episcopal Church is where Patrick Henry gave his famed’ liberty or death’ speech in 1775. Also located in Charles City County, Berkeley Plantation boasts a remarkable history: it was the home of a U.S. President and a signer of the Declaration of Independence, the site of the first official Thanksgiving, and the birthplace of bourbon whiskey. It was raided by Benedict Arnold, later served as a Union encampment under General George McClellan, and is where the bugle call "Taps" was written and first performed.
Wilton House, built around 1753 and relocated to Windsor Farms in the 1930s, offers visitors a look into 18th-century elite life along the James River, with preserved woodwork and period furnishings. In Chesterfield County, Eppington Plantation, built circa 1770, is notable for its Federal-style symmetry and its connections to Thomas Jefferson, who often visited. And Battersea, located in Petersburg, is a Palladian-style villa built in 1768—one of few surviving examples of its kind in Virginia.
Also worth noting: Scotchtown, another Hanover landmark, was home to Patrick Henry and remains one of the most architecturally unusual surviving 18th-century homes due to its wide central hall. In Goochland County, Tuckahoe Plantation—where Jefferson lived as a boy—is open for tours and still features its original terraced gardens.
Richmond itself includes several preserved and relocated buildings, such as Agecroft Hall, a Tudor estate brought from England; the John Marshall House, residence of the fourth Chief Justice; the Virginia State Capitol, designed by Jefferson; Old City Hall, a towering High Victorian Gothic building; and the Maggie L. Walker National Historic Site, celebrating one of America’s most groundbreaking Black business leaders.
In Colonial Heights, Violet Bank blends 18th-century architectural details with its later role as a Confederate military headquarters. And while Powhatan County has fewer publicly preserved landmarks, buildings like Mosby Tavern still stand as testaments to its 18th-century settlement history. Some experiences, like Henricus Historical Park in Chesterfield and Meadow Farm in Henrico, are faithful reconstructions—but they play a key role in interpreting the region’s early agricultural and colonial narratives, especially for school groups and public programs.
The buildings that first put Richmond on the young United States’s architectural map are neo-classical in style. The Virginia Capitol, designed by Thomas Jefferson and Charles-Louis Clerisseau, was built in 1785, making it older than the United States Constitution. Its Roman-style columns had a strong influence on other state houses and federal buildings constructed in the years that followed, including the White House and the US Capitol building in Washington DC.
In the early 1800s, inspired by discoveries brought to light during France’s 1797 conquering of Egypt, Egyptian revival architecture was popular in Richmond – and throughout the United States. Prominent examples of Egyptian revival designs can be found today in several of Richmond’s oldest cemeteries, including Shockoe Hill Cemetery (established in 1824) in the form of obelisks. However, the most prominent example of Egyptian revival architecture in Richmond today is the Egyptian Building.
Built in 1845, the Egyptian Building originally gave the medical school of Hampden-Sydney college its first permanent home. Now a part of the VCU Medical School campus, the Egyptian building was designed by Philadelphia-based architect Thomas S. Stewart. The building’s formidable columns and wrought-iron fence featuring an Egyptian herm motif in its vaguely humanoid fence posts capture the mystery and awe evoked by medical science in the people of early 19th century America. Meanwhile, the Egyptian Building’s interior, renovated in the 1930s by the Richmond firm of Baskervill & Son, was part of the Egyptian-influenced art deco movement of the era.
Many of the 19th century homes in Richmond’s more historic neighborhoods, especially those built in the aftermath of the 1865 Evacuation Fire, feature an Italianate architectural style. This was a distinct school of classical architecture that drew from 16th century Italian Renaissance styles. A famous example is the Putney houses, located on Marshall St in an area that was once the Courts End neighborhood. A father and son named Stephen and Samuel Putney, who owned a shoe factory in Richmond, were the original residents in the late 1800s. These days, the houses are part of the extensive VCU Medical Center complex.
The fact that the houses are still standing and still in use, though, speaks to a strength of Richmond’s architectural character – a willingness to engage in adaptive re-use. Once a city of factories, Richmond has embraced the buildings that remain, converting them into everything from modern office buildings to loft apartment complexes.
A great example of Richmond’s tendency to keep its history alive by reusing older structures that have outlived their original purpose is Broad Street Station, located on W. Broad St. near Arthur Ashe Blvd. Originally designed by John Russell Pope in the Beaux Arts style, it opened in 1919 as the southern terminus of the Richmond, Fredericksburg, and Potomac Railroad. When the station ceased operations in the mid-1970s, it was soon taken over by the Science Museum of Virginia, which still occupies the station today.
In the post-Civil War era, tobacco magnate Lewis Ginter used the fortunes he’d earned in one of Virginia’s earliest industries to begin developing upscale streetcar suburbs north of the city. He divided former plantation land into large residential plots and brought in every conceivable amenity, from new roads and sewer lines to the installation of the first electric streetcar system in the United States, the Richmond Union Passenger Railway. Ginter commissioned famed landscape architect Frederick Law Olmstead, best known for his design of New York’s Central Park, to design Brookland Parkway and the Sherwood Park neighborhood. Ginter also commissioned famed New York-based Beaux Arts architecture firm Carrere and Hastings to design and build a fabulous luxury hotel in downtown Richmond, which became the world-famous Jefferson Hotel.
The Museum District, located west of Arthur Ashe Boulevard between Scott’s Addition and Carytown and named for the presence within its boundaries of the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts and the Virginia Museum of History and Culture, is one of the best-preserved examples of an early 20th century suburb in Richmond today. For this reason, it was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1994. In 1996, the City of Richmond designated the Museum District a Design Overlay District, requiring the preservation of existing natural features and architectural composition, and for new construction within the district to be compatible with the character of surrounding buildings. These rules enable the Museum District to preserve its original character and ensure that the neighborhood remains a picturesque collection of early 20th century residential architecture.
Homes built in the 20th century give Richmond the character that’s generally associated with it; red brick Neo Colonial buildings dominate in historic neighborhoods like The Fan and Church Hill. Architect W. Duncan Lee, who worked primarily in the Colonial Revival style, designed several buildings in the Richmond area around this time, including a wing of the Virginia Executive Mansion and Georgian Revival-style Tuckahoe Apartments on Cary Street Road.
Around the same time, Richmond’s first Black architect, Charles Thaddeus Russell, was playing a crucial role in the development of Jackson Ward’s Black Wall Street neighborhood. Employed by Virginia Union University, Russell had studied drafting and design at Alabama’s Tuskegee Institute. Russell’s best-known design was Maggie Walker’s St. Luke Penny Savings Bank, which was later demolished when Interstate 95 split the neighborhood in two. Like many of his commercial buildings, the Richmond Beneficial Insurance building, at the intersection of Second and Jackson St, was a neoclassical structure that included both apartments and offices.
Ethel Bailey Furman was the first known Black female architect in Virginia, and began her architectural work during the 1920s while working multiple other jobs to support her family. Beginning as a draftsperson for her father’s contracting business, by the late 1920s she was regularly designing private homes for Richmonders. She designed over 200 homes, churches, and other buildings around Virginia during the mid-20th century. In 1985 a park on North 28th Street in Church Hill was named for her. Historians are still making discoveries about her stereotype breaking role and accomplishments, made difficult by the fact that she wasn’t even allowed to sign many of her blueprints, given the deep division and racism of her day.
While Richmond is better known for Colonial Revival architecture, there is a small but significant modernist presence in the city as well. The first International Style home in Richmond was built in the 1930s by George E. Hoppe Jr. Hoppe went on to build over a dozen homes in the area that retained a strong modernist style.
A fair amount of other Mid Century modern designers were at work in the postwar era in Richmond. These include former Frank Lloyd Wright apprentice Bud Hyland, as well as Minoru Yamasaki, who designed the city’s Federal Reserve Building. While some Mid Century modern homes can be found in and around the area, Bon Air, on the Southside of the James River, holds the distinction of having the most. Notably, across the river a bit, near Windsor Farms, is The Rice House, designed by Richard Neutra in 1965, it occupies its own private island in the river. Originally donated to the Science Museum of Virginia Foundation, it was sold to private buyers in 2016. It is the only International Style structure in the area.
One of the strangest and most striking buildings in Richmond is the Markel Building, which was commissioned in the early 60s by The Markel Corporation and designed by Haigh Jamgochian. While Jamgochian’s wild architectural concepts were sometimes praised by architectural design critics and have been built in far-flung cities around the world, the Markel Building is one of only two Jamgochian designs ever built in the Richmond area, and the only one that still stands today. Inspired by a baked potato wrapped in foil (yes, seriously), the building is often referred to as a “flying saucer” by locals, its tiered levels wrapped in slabs of aluminum over 500 feet in length. The result looks like something out of the original 60s version of Star Trek, and has been voted one of the world’s ten ugliest buildings by Digital Journal. That said, it was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2017, and many Richmonders love its unique skyline-dominating look.
Today, contemporary townhouse projects dominate the cityscape, with buildings beginning to rise above the city’s normally low skyline in order to increase density in the desirable city center. Meanwhile, the most interesting architectural development over the past decade may be the revitalization of the Scott’s Addition neighborhood. Once dominated by industry and laced with spur rail lines that delivered goods to warehouses and factories, a combination of new provisions for breweries to have on-site taprooms and historic tax credits that privileged adaptive reuse of former industrial buildings have transformed Scott’s Addition into one of the city’s most desirable neighborhoods.
In the end, the city’s architectural diversity, respect for all of its previous eras, and fearless continued innovation add up to make Richmond one of the most interesting cities in which to wander around looking at buildings – not to mention what a great pleasure it is to live and work in them.
The Best in: History, Events, Birds, Native Plants, and so much more! 100% Positive Content Guaranteed.
Thank you for subscribing to our newsletter
Privacy Notice: We use cookies on our website to enhance your experience. By continuing on our website, you consent to our use of cookies. Learn more in our Privacy Policy.
![an image of rock formations, during[removed]void(0) low tide in the James River basin in Richmond, VA.](images/about-richmond/geology-thumbnail.jpg)