I don’t consider either building embarrasing. I’m embarrased what has happened to them. I lived in Richmond for 7 years before I actually located them. What nobody want to visit is the VCU Hospital complex. It’s too late to save either building except by moving them, IMHO.

See UR previous discussion about “A Park, A Marina, why not both?” for a better use of this part of the river.

Um, the Museum of the Confederacy is leaving; that is, its library and exhibition building will be broken up and sent to at least three other sites throughout Central Virginia — leastwise, that was the latest. This separation is to be funded, in part, by the sale of the 1980s building.

The “White House of the Confederacy” was built for the residency of banker Dr. John Brockenbrough in 1818. Jefferson Davis resided there during the 1861-1865 discussion. The Confederate government purchased the house but Davis chose to pay rent while he stayed there. The place stood there long before the Civil War, and is a representative–with the Wickham-Valentine House and the John Marshall House, and other residences along East Clay and East Marshall–of the Federal and immediate antebellum era flowering of Court End.

What will happen to the Brockenbrough House is anybody’s guess; my guess, like in some European museum, it’ll be placed in the courtyard atrium of whatever VCU building goes there.

Fact is, people from around the country –and I know this, having hosted a few–want to see the place you may consider embarrassing. And I’ll just leave the subject there, as I am not any institution’s apologist.

As for the fate of West Hospital, that the demolition of this astounding landmark is again even under consideration is a cultural atrocity and an affront to the people and the people’s government of Richmond. I am tired, oh so very tired, of buildings going up that are nothing less than monuments to the lowest bidders; or representations of ego. Architects make a living by pleasing clients, some of whom don’t know anything about aesthetics, and could give a flying fig about art or architecture.

As exhibit, I give you the present Richmond skyline which aspires to the generic qualities of suburban-styled cities of North Carolina and Northern Virginia; the past 35 years have yielded nothing beautiful, breathtaking or bold.

The best buildings in central Richmond went up prior to 1950, though even many of those are in the wrong place. Thomas Jefferson’s Temple of Democracy is now almost hidden behind glass and concrete towers housing lawyers, insurance agents and government paperwork. If that’s not a metaphor, I don’t know what is.

Meanwhile, Echo Harbour developers may get their way and a splendid parkland space will be ruined when it should be knitted into the James River Parks system, along with the former Blue Singles property at the north end of the Powhite Bridge.

It is to weep.

I haven’t followed the fight over the West Hospital (having just moved to Richmond fairly recently), but it’s hard for me to believe that the only viable option for VCU is to demolish it. It may be the easiest one for them, but surely not the only possible one.

If the commission continues to thumb its nose at this whole process, I think we need to have a public demonstration, a letter writing campaign, something to show that they cannot just dismiss this plan and everything that led up to it.

With regards to West Hospital, I’d like to see it stay. Its leaps and bounds better than the rest of the monstrosity we know as VCU/MCV. Talk about an urban nightmare. I think it would be a mercy killing to take the White House and the Museum of the Confederacy out of there. I’d be embarassed to take visitors in there.