Downtown
The Shockoe Examiner takes a long look at the Emily Winfree Cottage
What is important about this structure is the accomplishment and perseverance of Winfree and many like her, for decades.
Anybody that has traveled through Shockoe Bottom over the years has seen the rather plain cottage that was once owned by Emily Winfree. The plain facade hides an amazing story that Richmond should be celebrating not pushing to the side and forgetting.
Selden Richardson of the The Shockoe Examiner looks into the history of Emily’s cottage.
The full story of the cottage:
Architecturally, what is now known as the Winfree Cottage is unremarkable and it was probably like a thousand other working-class houses built in Richmond during Reconstruction. What is important about this structure is the accomplishment and perseverance of Winfree and many like her, for decades. Contrary to stereotype, the story of Ms. Winfree and her family and community is one of complicated cross-racial relationships. Research has demonstrated that throughout those years, family members that might have come through Ms. Winfree’s door could have been of a variety of colors and social stations, reflecting a segregated city’s attempts to function under an unreasonable and, in the end, unsustainable system of racial division.
