In doing research on the origin and ownership of the Bellevue Arch, the Bellevue Civic Association discovered the following history of Bellevue Park neighborhood. The article appeared in the Fall 1981 edition of The Richmond Quarterly. Our thanks to Alexander G. Monroe, city records manager for the Richmond Public Library, for finding and forwarding the article to the Civic Association.

When the dogwoods are in bloom in April, and especially when the sugar maples are in full color in October, there is not a street in Richmond and perhaps in all of Virginia that can surpass Pope Avenue for sheer beauty. Pope Avenue is a short curvaceous street which passes gracefully through the Bellevue Park subdivision. It begins at the stone archway on Hermitage Road and ends at Crestwood Road (originally called Clinton Avenue).

Bellevue Park is bounded on the west by Hermitage Road, on the north by Westbrook Avenue, on the east by Crestwood Road and on the south by Bellevue Avenue; originally it was larger, extending eastward to Brook Road.

Bellevue Park was once a part of Westbrook plantation, which had its house and barns on what is now the grounds of Westbrook Psychiatric Hospital [now Westminster-Canterbury], next to Azalea Mall. Westbrook plantation in 1787 was owned by Robert Price. In 1798, John Young and his wife conveyed 418 acres of the plantation to their son, William. It is quite certain that the land had been cleared for farm crops and pasture by that time. The Young family continued its ownership of the land now occupied by Bellevue Park until 1877. John Pope, for whom Pope Avenue was named, bought 65 acres of this land in 1889.

Pope was the adopted son of Lewis Ginter, whose summer house was the improved and much enlarged residence of the former Westbrook plantation. Pope Avenue is said to have been a country road connecting Hermitage Road with the Ginter mansion at Westbrook. Both John Pope and Lewis Ginter were wealthy members of the Richmond establishment in the 1890s. When John Pope died in 1896, the 65 acres together with another one hundred acres passed to John¹s brother, George, who lived in New York. George Pope eventually moved to Richmond and proceeded to develop the area into lots for sale, naming it Bellevue Park, perhaps even fulfilling an intention of his brother, John.  In 1906, lots were offered for sale by advertising in both morning and evening Richmond newspapers. It is believed that by this time sugar maple trees had been planted along both Pope and Bellevue avenues and that the stone archway with the name Bellevue engraved at its summit had been erected, anticipating that this would be the entrance to a beautiful view. On the drawings were also Virginia Avenue, which later became Princeton Road; and Regetree Avenue, which never materialized.

The venture must not have been much of a success. By 1913 only one house seems to have been located in Bellevue Park and that may have been built much earlier; and only four lots had been sold. George Pope died in 1917 and the property passed to his sister, Margaret, who was about to marry and needed the money. She sold it to two brothers, Lee and C.W. Davis, for $100,000. Six months later, the Davis brothers had sold half of the lots for $107,000.

J. Lee Davis had a house built for himself on 14 acres of the subdivision in 1920, calling it Willowbrook for the willows growing along the stream nearby. The name remains on the gatepost across Hermitage Road from the Scottish Rite Temple [Willowbrook is today The New Community School]. According to Mr. Davis¹s account, the house had 15 rooms and five baths. There was a garage for eight automobiles, a lily pond with goldfish, various statuary, a garden, a saddle horse, two mules, several Guernsey cows and a cottage for a servant and his wife. After caring for the garden and livestock and milking the cows, the servant would change into a white coat and serve dinner. There was also a cook and a maid.

Nearly all construction in Bellevue Park has been since 1920. The first house on Pope Avenue, for example, was built by Morton Wallerstein in 1921 at 1601 Pope Avenue. Pope Avenue at that time was often an almost impassable dirt road. Mrs. Margaret Burbage recalls that in 1928 while she was living at 1517 Bellevue Avenue, the City widened the street and had to destroy the sugar maples that had been planted years before and replaced them with small pin oaks. Bellevue Park subdivision, with handsome trees along Pope and Bellevue avenues, and the stone archway remain today as a memorial to the members of the Pope family and the Davis brothers.
 

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