Where am I? (Part 8)

Richmonders are passionate about preserving history. Do you know where this particular part of the past (in the image above) is located?

If you know, click on the word comments below to give your answer.

My niece Terry has been nailing the last couple of images, correctly identifying them. She did it again, letting us all know that the image posted yesterday was of the former Home for Needy Confederate Women, now known as the Pauley Center at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts. The image showed the façade of the building, which faces Sheppard Street on the west side of the museum’s sculpture garden.

After spending several million dollars renovating the building, the museum opened the Pauley Center in 1999. From then until I retired in 2010, my office was in the north wing of that building. The Confederate ladies who once lived there, mind you, could not bring themselves to call it the north wing. Since the building is symmetrical, with wings to the north and the south, it would seem logical to have called them the north and south wings. But the Confederate ladies defied logic and called them the east and the west wings. Their husbands, fathers and brothers had, after all, fought for the South.

My job, of course, was to write for the museum, and here’s a portion of what I wrote as VMFA was preparing to move into the refurbished building. I offer it because I enjoyed doing the research, and it gets the facts straight.

The Home for Needy Confederate Women was chartered in 1898 by the Virginia General Assembly to provide a home for needy widows, sisters and daughters of former Confederate soldiers. The home originally operated at 1726 Grove Ave until 1904 when it moved to 3 E. Grace St.

After a fire in 1916, the home’s Board of Managers decided to build a fireproof structure. The substantial Sheppard Street facility was built in 1932, and the architect, Merrill Lee, modeled it after the White House in Washington. The dignity of the structure was meant to suggest that its occupants should be regarded with respect by society and to provide the residents with pride in their home.

By 1989, only nine women remained in the home, which was no longer economically feasible to operate. The residents were moved to a special wing of Brandermill Woods nursing home in Chesterfield County and control of the building reverted to the Commonwealth of Virginia. Shortly thereafter the property was conveyed by then-Governor Gerald L. Baliles to the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts.

(If you’re coming in during the middle of this exercise on how well you know Richmond, you can start from the beginning by clicking here.)