This is a lovely guest post by a Richmond native who now lives in D.C.  Tamara Lucas Copeland was nice enough to share this with us.

Every time I come to Richmond, I drive down Brookland Park Boulevard.  I start at Edgewood Avenue, the street where I lived, and drive east for about 10 blocks.  I haven’t lived in Richmond for over 20 years now, but this is still a regular drive whenever I am in town and every time I wonder why Brookland Park Boulevard hasn’t emerged as another Carytown.

photo by john.murden - http://www.flickr.com/photos/murden/

In the early 1960s, Brookland Park Boulevard was the dividing line between a robust, new, African American community south of the Boulevard and a dying, lower income white community north of the Boulevard.   I lived south of Brookland Park Boulevard in a racially segregated, middle class enclave.  Richmond’s first black vice mayor, Winfred Mundle, lived next door, college professors were across the street – white collar and blue collar workers mixed in this quiet, well-manicured neighborhood.  I imagine that across the Boulevard, life was just as tranquil for the white community. I really don’t know, but what I do know is that everyone came together on Brookland Park Boulevard.

One of my early childhood memories is of going to the corner store at Brookland Park Boulevard and Edgewood Avenue. I believe Mr. James was the owner.  Whenever my mom or dad had forgotten something at the Safeway, I was told to run up to Mr. James to get it.  It was clean, well-stocked and had friendly staff. No one worried about anything happening to me. This was a quiet, safe neighborhood.

In the dark of the morning, paper boys would gather without concern on the corner of Hanes Avenue and Brookland Park Boulevard to deliver the Richmond Times Dispatch when it was the morning paper and the Richmond News Leader was the evening paper.  Across from the paper boys’ spot was High’s Ice Cream Store.  High’s was a favorite stopping spot after school. The ice cream was good and the store was open year round, but in the summer High’s had a major nearby rival.  Woody’s was the ice cream parlor down the street. With their hand-churned, rich ice cream, High’s simply couldn’t compete. Summer time and Woody’s French vanilla ice cream will forever be bound together in my memory.

On the other side of the street was the Brookland Theater, an old-style, movie house, built in the late 1920s. I don’t remember the Brookland ever being open, but then again maybe it simply wasn’t open to me – a black child in the neighborhood — or maybe most of my memories are daytime ones as I walked to and from JEB Stuart Elementary or Chandler Junior High School and the movie theater really did come to life in the evenings for the neighborhood.  Two doors down from the Brookland Theater was the five and dime store.  I remember wandering the aisles for what felt like hours as I gazed on all the treasures that sparkled and shone.  Sometimes after saving my allowance, I proudly bought my mom a present from the five and dime.

Brookland Park Boulevard also had an upholstery store and a dry cleaners, a barber shop and the TV repair shop owned by Mr. Johnson, the dad of my friends Debbie and Jeannie.  There was a gas station where the attendants pumped gas into my dad’s Buick, cleaned the windows and checked the car’s oil level.   Atkinson and Howard’s Drug Store anchored the corner of North Avenue and Brookland Park Boulevard. Close by was the hardware store and the melt-in-your-mouth goodness of the cream filled doughnuts at Quality Bakery.

Brookland Park Boulevard was an integral part of my childhood and a welcomed part of the neighborhood.  Carytown and Brookland Park Boulevard had several similar traits: a linchpin movie house and a commercial strip that abutted a solid residential area. What factors led Carytown to evolve into the “mile of style”, a cluster of art stores, trendy restaurants and boutique clothing shops while Brookland Park Boulevard was left to slowly and quietly decline?

Today, Brookland Park Boulevard is still a commercial strip. The same tree-lined sidewalks are there. The same small, brick buildings line the street, but the businesses are different.  The paper boys of my day would now be picking up their newspapers in front of a tattoo parlor.  Beauty parlors and barber shops are the main businesses and far too many vacant buildings, like the Brookland Theater, line the street.  This is a dying commercial strip and one that has been dying for 25 years. My rose-colored glasses keep seeing the potential in Brookland Park Boulevard and it’s a vision that I’m not ready to let go.

Note: The author now lives in Washington, DC, but regularly visits friends and family in Richmond.

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