The Shockoe Institute hosted a ceremonial groundbreaking for its Main Street Station center on Thursday. (Photos by Jackie DiBartolomeo)
A crowd gathered on the first floor of Main Street Station Thursday morning for the ceremonial groundbreaking of the Shockoe Institute, a 12,000-square-foot educational and interpretive center that will be part of the larger Shockoe Project slavery memorial campus in Shockoe Bottom.
Shockoe Institute President and CEO Marland Buckner was joined by the likes of Mayor Danny Avula, City Council President Cynthia Newbille and more to sign a steel beam that will go into the construction of the new venue.
The center will be divided into two sections: a 10,000-square-foot exhibition space that will explore the evolution of racial slavery in Virginia and the U.S. and a lab space that will host programming such as lectures and book talks.
To be housed on the northern-end ground floor of the Train Shed at Main Street Station, the center is funded by a grant from the New York City-based Andrew W. Mellon Foundation’s monuments project.
“It was the Mellon Foundation’s grant of $11 million that allows this institute to be the largest privately funded effort dedicated to understanding slavery, the domestic slave trade in Richmond and the struggle to expand human freedom,” Buckner said at the event.
Mayor Danny Avula spoke at the institute groundbreaking.
The groundbreaking took place on the 160th anniversary of Emancipation Day in Richmond, when Union forces took control of the city in 1865.
Avula praised both the “unprecedented gift” of the Mellon Foundation grant and the Shockoe Institute for its plans to share the story of slavery in Richmond.
“Now, to see that come together in something like the Shockoe Institute that will be a place that will teach folks, that will engage folks and that will make sure people have the opportunity to wrestle with our history … I couldn’t be prouder to have this in our city,” Avula said at the event.
The day’s events also included a musical performance from Shockoe Institute founding artistic director and musician Leyla McCalla, who performed “Heart of Gold,” a song adapted from Langston Hughes’ poetry, as she played her cello.
The City of Richmond announced in February it had chosen Newport News contractor Team Henry Enterprises to lead the construction of the interpretive center. Richmond architecture firm Baskervill is handling the design.
Team Henry, led by president and CEO Devon Henry, has been involved in numerous Richmond-area projects and was the contractor hired to remove several Confederate statues, including the Stonewall Jackson statue on Monument Avenue, over several years starting in 2020.
Henry said at the groundbreaking he was excited for Team Henry to be a part of bringing the Shockoe Institute vision to life for Richmonders.
“For us to have the opportunity to be the contractor that comes in and brings this type of project to life, it gives me purpose,” Henry told BizSense.
Marland Buckner welcomed guests to the institute’s groundbreaking.
The interpretive center build-out is an initial component of the greater Shockoe Project, a relaunching of the previously named Enslaved African Heritage Campus, and later, the Shockoe Bottom Heritage Campus. The long-term project aims to transform 10 acres of Shockoe Bottom into a campus that reckons with the history of slavery in Richmond.
The Main Street Station interpretive center will serve as a starting point for the project, leading into other components, such as a long-planned 62,000-square-foot slavery museum, burial ground memorials and other commemorative sites, including a 21,000-square-foot building commemorating the Lumpkin’s Slave Jail/Devil’s Half Acre site.
Other facets include improvements to the Richmond Slave Trail and the Winfree Cottage, an enslaved woman’s home that is planned to be moved from Shockoe Bottom back to its original location in Manchester.
The Shockoe Institute at Main Street Station is slated to open its doors by this time next year, Buckner said at the event. The city’s goal is to complete the Shockoe Project by 2037, commemorating Richmond’s 300th birthday.
The Shockoe Institute hosted a ceremonial groundbreaking for its Main Street Station center on Thursday. (Photos by Jackie DiBartolomeo)
A crowd gathered on the first floor of Main Street Station Thursday morning for the ceremonial groundbreaking of the Shockoe Institute, a 12,000-square-foot educational and interpretive center that will be part of the larger Shockoe Project slavery memorial campus in Shockoe Bottom.
Shockoe Institute President and CEO Marland Buckner was joined by the likes of Mayor Danny Avula, City Council President Cynthia Newbille and more to sign a steel beam that will go into the construction of the new venue.
The center will be divided into two sections: a 10,000-square-foot exhibition space that will explore the evolution of racial slavery in Virginia and the U.S. and a lab space that will host programming such as lectures and book talks.
To be housed on the northern-end ground floor of the Train Shed at Main Street Station, the center is funded by a grant from the New York City-based Andrew W. Mellon Foundation’s monuments project.
“It was the Mellon Foundation’s grant of $11 million that allows this institute to be the largest privately funded effort dedicated to understanding slavery, the domestic slave trade in Richmond and the struggle to expand human freedom,” Buckner said at the event.
Mayor Danny Avula spoke at the institute groundbreaking.
The groundbreaking took place on the 160th anniversary of Emancipation Day in Richmond, when Union forces took control of the city in 1865.
Avula praised both the “unprecedented gift” of the Mellon Foundation grant and the Shockoe Institute for its plans to share the story of slavery in Richmond.
“Now, to see that come together in something like the Shockoe Institute that will be a place that will teach folks, that will engage folks and that will make sure people have the opportunity to wrestle with our history … I couldn’t be prouder to have this in our city,” Avula said at the event.
The day’s events also included a musical performance from Shockoe Institute founding artistic director and musician Leyla McCalla, who performed “Heart of Gold,” a song adapted from Langston Hughes’ poetry, as she played her cello.
The City of Richmond announced in February it had chosen Newport News contractor Team Henry Enterprises to lead the construction of the interpretive center. Richmond architecture firm Baskervill is handling the design.
Team Henry, led by president and CEO Devon Henry, has been involved in numerous Richmond-area projects and was the contractor hired to remove several Confederate statues, including the Stonewall Jackson statue on Monument Avenue, over several years starting in 2020.
Henry said at the groundbreaking he was excited for Team Henry to be a part of bringing the Shockoe Institute vision to life for Richmonders.
“For us to have the opportunity to be the contractor that comes in and brings this type of project to life, it gives me purpose,” Henry told BizSense.
Marland Buckner welcomed guests to the institute’s groundbreaking.
The interpretive center build-out is an initial component of the greater Shockoe Project, a relaunching of the previously named Enslaved African Heritage Campus, and later, the Shockoe Bottom Heritage Campus. The long-term project aims to transform 10 acres of Shockoe Bottom into a campus that reckons with the history of slavery in Richmond.
The Main Street Station interpretive center will serve as a starting point for the project, leading into other components, such as a long-planned 62,000-square-foot slavery museum, burial ground memorials and other commemorative sites, including a 21,000-square-foot building commemorating the Lumpkin’s Slave Jail/Devil’s Half Acre site.
Other facets include improvements to the Richmond Slave Trail and the Winfree Cottage, an enslaved woman’s home that is planned to be moved from Shockoe Bottom back to its original location in Manchester.
The Shockoe Institute at Main Street Station is slated to open its doors by this time next year, Buckner said at the event. The city’s goal is to complete the Shockoe Project by 2037, commemorating Richmond’s 300th birthday.
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In a time period where we have many at the national stage looking to obscure the parts of history that they personally disagree with, it gives one hope to see that there are still many people who value learning the difficult realities of history and who we are as a country. This is the type of development that makes me proud of where I live and I’m glad that this space is finally receiving the recognition it deserves.
It is a nice thought but this is the basement back section of an underutilized train station in a space that has a history of flooding. I mean is it going to be staffed or open with any regularity. Love BHM in Jackson Ward but it is only open 4 days a week from 10am – 5pm. I hope we see the larger museum one day but doubtful after 25 years of planning that another decade will make any difference.
Call me an uninformed simpleton if you will, but I can think of better ways to spend $11 million than on a project to help us understand slavery. I’m not sure what’s to understand. I already understand it was a terrible thing. I understand the nation went to war against itself to end slavery. And I understand that we’re still feeling the repercussions from the horrors of slavery. Please, in all sincerity, can someone tell me what more we need to understand and how can spending $11 million help us to better understand that.
Using your logic, why have any museums?
Except this isn’t a museum. The artcle indicates a museum is yet to come – after this $11 million structure.
Not the clearest of reporting, but I believe this part of project is less than $1M.
The 62,000 SF museum will be much more than $11M. The $11M is just the value of the grant from the Mellon Foundation.
This guy charged $2M to take down 5 statues and was a sole source bidder and political donor to Stoney. And if the cost is only $1M and they got $11M why did the city procure the contractor?? Answer this money is to set up, build out the space and run the foundation. They have no real endowment, other funding except the City now, and no major donors have stepped up. Look for this foundation to fade like the last two that were to build museums in RVA and F-burg. Remember that with previous state set aside they have received… Read more »
I’m sorry to offend so many, but I have to agree with Steve Cook’s remarks. I’m no white supremacist or locked up in the splendor of the old South. I think my black friends would agree. But I don’t understand the quest to put all the inhumanity and terror behind us, and focus on lifting up people of color and fully accepting them as equals (sometimes, superiors!) in our blended society, while at the same time we constantly construct these reminders of how messed up we were, as a society. Wouldn’t it be better to look forward and put the… Read more »
“Those who know their station in life know the greatest contentment.” Anonymous
The space being utilized for the museum encompasses, what is recognized as, the largest cemetery of enslaved people in the United States. There are still thousands of unmarked graves there. I doubt your “black friends” would agree that apartments and parking lots should be built over a historic cemetery. So, why wouldn’t that be a fitting place for a museum that honors the lives of the people interred there? Historical records show that the efforts to obscure and repurpose that land were intentional. So, you propose we should just dishonor them further and forget about the “inhumanity and terror” they… Read more »
You read a lot I never said into my reply. I never said the burying ground should be paved over, obscured or repurposed. That’s for another discussion where my position would be to leave it marked, but vacant and hallowed. Like any graveyard. The point I was making – and the point you chose to ignore – is to redirect the millions of dollars into some activity or undertaking that could have measurable benefit to existing people whose lives would benefit from the investment. And by extension, their offspring, in all probability. As I said, look at a black person… Read more »