From UVA’s Vinegar Hill Project comes this great collection of historical photos of Vinegar Hill prior to its razing—houses and businesses, in particular. Anybody interested in local history will get a kick out of this.
News and meta-news about Charlottesville, VA, since 2001.
Sideblog
Police announced this afternoon that their investigation into what was initially believed to be a fatal fire on Rugby Avenue is now a homicide investigation. #
The Virginia Supreme Court has denied George Huguely’s appeal. His second-degree murder conviction will stand, WRIC reports. #
In a carefully worded story, and not citing specific sources, WTVR reports that forensic evidence belonging to Jesse Matthew Jr., the main suspect in the disappearance of Hannah Graham, matches forensic evidence collected during the investigation of Morgan Harrington’s 2009 murder. #
In the wake of Hannah Graham’s disappearance, and the evidence that came from private security footage, city officials are revisiting the question of installing security cameras on the downtown mall. #
Both Charlottesville Registrar Sheri Iachetta and former Electoral Board member Stephanie Commander have turned themselves in to the police on
foursix and four felony counts of embezzlement, respectively. #Ten years ago, the National Institutes of Health budget doubled and schools like the University of Virginia built massive new research facilities. A decade later, those buildings remain largely underutilized. NPR visits UVA in this story on the effect of federal binge and spurge spending in the sciences. #
In 2012, Council approved a new student housing complex on West Main—now some council members are questioning whether what they were shown matches what was built. #
The Architectural Review Board has approved a bike-themed mural on West Market, below the McGuffey Art Center, although at least one member expressed concerns that it might look like the bicyclists were riding away from Charlottesville’s downtown. #
City Police Chief Tim Longo is meeting with city leaders to work on protocols regarding the use of military surplus police weapons in Charlottesville. #
A 100-year-old Colonnades resident received military honors for her service in the WWII Women’s Army Corps #
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While anything that is a part of history is very cool tome, this neighborhood seems best as history. I had known it was pretty much a slum, but not quite to that extent. Curiously, with the exception of that small area, it seems that the Black dominated portions of the city remain very close to the past. Much less gentrification that I had imagined.
Imagine homes valued at under 2K in downtown Cville in our life time.
While a tiny number of structures were in terrible shape like this one, most appeared to be in good shape.
When I scroll the flickr pics, no way do i say MOST… perhaps occasional. And for better or worse, the value of a house is based on those around them, not the best in the middle.
Homes may have been shabby overall, no doubt shabbier than white areas of town. No doubt the overall “home values” were low. On the other hand, a community is more than just the overall value of the real estate in which it exists. Vinegar Hill was inhabited by a community made up families and individuals who had ties to one another: friendships, kinships, business relationships. When you uproot ALL of that, all at once, you can’t just deposit it in some new place, particularly a place like Westhaven, and expect the community to thrive. If the powers-that-be had truly been concerned about the living conditions of the residents of Vinegar Hill–rather than simply wishing to MOVE the residents and essentially annex the valuable land–they could have and should have “renewed” them on the land they had been on for generations.
This particular collection of pictures, I wonder if they were taken worth an agenda in mind. Sort of a “harvest of shame” idea. In the c.1980 era I used to hear this statistic “Charlottesville has the highest % of houses without indoor plumbing in the state,” something like that. At the time I took it as an attempt to dramatize the wide gap between rich & poor. (Similar comments were made about western Albemarle horse country up against hillbilly hollows.) Only later did I realize it had been part of the propaganda campaign to tear down Vinegar Hill. The buildings were gone, made into vacant fields, but the poisonous attitudes remained.
You can look at the old insurance maps and see a wide variety of housing and businesses were there. Lebensraum for downtown interests took a lot of the coherence out of an old community in the center of the city.