RECENT COMMENTS
Vacant on Leigh Street
This house at 2902 East Leigh Street has made Historic Richmond Foundation’s Under the Radar, “a weekly update about properties and/or history in jeopardy”.
This c. 1910 row house is considered a contributing structure to the Church Hill North Historic District by the Department of Historic Resources. The porch has slender paired Doric columns on brick piers with a wooden balustrade that support a flat roof with a modillion and dentil cornice. The owners named on the city’s property search website are The Williams family. The property is assessed at $34,000 and clearly is in poor condition. If this house were rehabbed, it would be an amazing addition to the block.
This house may be familiar from March’s 10 most blighted houses in Church Hill…
I’ll preface this with the fact that I would love to see this home renovated. The house does have some great architectural features. It would also serve as a great entry-level home for the neighborhood.
However, this house is in very poor condition. The chimneys on the west face are crumbling away each day. The rear wall is buckling and appears to be in danger of collapsing. Several large raccoons and cats live in the crawl space of the house. The last I heard from my neighbors is that City will be demolishing this house in the near future. Someone will need to act quickly to save this house. I imagine working through the family trust that owns the house will take some time as well.
I hope this doesn’t come off as too negative, but this house has some serious challenges to overcome if it is going to be saved.