Category: History
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Slave Block: historical marker thief disrupts the narrative in Charlottesville
We naturally want what happens in the world to reinforce our notion of reality, to serve as examples of the things we believe in, but the truth, as Oscar Wilde observed, is rarely pure and never simple. When the historical marker for the slave auction block in Court Square went missing in the early morning…
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Flashback: what was it like moving to the DTM in 1980?
In 1980, local realtor Roger Voisinet published an article in the Daily Progress about his decision to live on the Downtown Mall (not something too many people considered back then) and his hopes for the urban experiment. So, did it become what he imagined it would? “Yes, the Mall did become what I imagined and…
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Saying Goodbye: Main Street Arena Architect Reflects on its Demolition
Local restoration architect Henry J. Browne, now in his 80s, has been stopping in for coffee at the restaurant at the Omni Hotel this past week, not necessarily for the coffee, but for the view it provides of the building across the way that he designed over 20 years ago, and which is about to…
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Video: “White silence is violence…”
Neo-Nazi James Alex Fields Jr. was just sentenced to life in prison for killing Heather Heyer in a vehicular attack in Charlottesville, Virginia last year. In this video, the Charlottesville community reflects on its history and recovery since the August 2017 rally. pic.twitter.com/EaS3T6vxPs — HuffPost (@HuffPost) December 11, 2018 https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js
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Responding to A12: DTM public art prize draws entries from around the world
After the events of August 12 last year, Bushman Dreyfus Architects sought to address the idea of monuments and memorials in contemporary civic life by creating the BDA Prize design and ideas competition, inviting architects, artists, and designers to come up with works of public art or architecture that would address some of the many…
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Talk of DTM decline and demise a familiar story
Once again, there’s been talk about The DTM’s decline and possible demise…about how economic circumstances, recent events, development, and alleged city planning bungling is hurting the downtown mall area. After writing about The DTM for a number of years, one thing I’ve noticed is that it’s decline and demise as been predicted pretty much since…
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The Lee Statue in Charlottesville: from Tulips to Terror in a few short years
By David McNair Now that the symbolism of the statue of Robert E. Lee in Charlottesville, Virginia has literally exploded into our consciousness, it’s easy to forget how blind we were to it just a short time ago. The truth is, only a few years before the idea of removing the Lee statue became an…
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Why Charlottesville? How a Facebook comment, an unknown blogger, and some old tweets inflamed a debate about race and monuments
At the time, if you told people in Charlottesville that hundreds of angry white supremacists and neo-nazis would rally in a park just steps away from the theater the following summer, they’d have thought you were crazy.
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Vintage DTM: Main Street 100 years ago
Main Street, Looking East: This image is from a photo postcard showing Main Street in Charlottesville as seen from the base of Vinegar Hill over 100 years ago. Interestingly, Main Street was first paved with bricks. It was a dirt street prior to this. Asphalt would come a few years later and then Main Street…
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