Must-See RVA! — Robinson House

200 North Boulevard
Built, circa 1845 – 1859
VDHR 127-0741

The very thing, when you need 7,900 square feet for a single family home.

(Valentine Museum) — Edith Shelton — circa 1945

Located on the present-day campus of the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts (VMFA) and on property that also bears the designation of the R. E. Lee Camp Confederate Memorial Park. The three-bay brick structure, measuring 7,900 square feet, is Italianate in design with Victorian embellishments. It features three stories, a basement, and an attic with access to a belvedere*.

April 2015

Constructed initially as a modest summer dwelling for Anthony Robinson Jr. and his wife, Rebecca, the house was likely begun in the late 1840s. Family history indicates that construction continued and the dwelling grew incrementally (architect unknown) until it was completed sometime between 1855 and 1859, after which the Robinsons commenced year-round occupancy.

(Valentine Museum) — Edith Shelton — circa 1955

The resulting two-story residence featured characteristics of the Italian Villa style popularized by Andrew J. Downing in the mid-19th century. In 1884, the Robinsons’ son Channing sold the house and surrounding acreage—then referred to as The Grove—to the R. E. Lee Camp, No. 1, Confederate Veterans, to become a home for indigent and disabled former soldiers. Modified for institutional use by the R. E. Lee Camp Confederate Soldiers’ Home (hereafter Soldiers’ Home or Home), the building gained a third floor in 1886. Renamed Fleming Hall after Robert I. Fleming (1842-1907)—the Washington, D.C., architect who funded and designed the renovation—the structure housed offices, living spaces for veterans, and a war museum over the subsequent half century.

(Rocket Werks RVA Postcards)

Visual evidence of the building’s first two phases of physical development and history—as the country seat of a prominent 19th-century Virginia family and as the distinctive administration building of a nationally acclaimed soldiers’ home—is still intact. The stylistic synthesis of architectural elements—Italianate and Victorian—makes Robinson House one of the most unusual, architecturally evolved buildings in Richmond. (VDHR)

* Belvedere — a structure (such as a cupola or a summerhouse) designed to command a view.

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