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Driggs, Sarah Shields; Richard Guy Wilson; Robert P. Winthrop. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2001. Pp. xi, 280. Colour and black and white illustrations, appendix, index. US$39.95 (cloth)
Richmond's Monument Avenue is a beautifully produced book, with a large format and many well-printed color photographs. Produced with the support of local historical associations, it represents, in a sense, a celebration of Monument Avenue's 1998 designation as a National Historic Landmark.
For a book of this type, basically an architectural history, the subject matter is unusual: a single streetscape rather than an architecturally significant building or historic district. True, it is an elite streetscape, built by, and for, wealthy people, but no famous architect designed its plan and most of its buildings were designed by little-remembered local architects. Such a study is a welcome addition to the cultural landscape literature.
Within this context, however, Monument Avenue is a difficult subject matter. True to its name, it is a street of monuments, four out of six of which depict confederate civil war heroes - Robert E. Lee, J.E.B. Stuart, Stonewall Jackson, and Jefferson Davis. Erected at successive street intersections by local civic groups between 1890 and 1919, they were meant to celebrate the memory of the "Lost Cause." Not surprisingly, Monument Avenue had a long history of deed restrictions against black ownership or tenure. Interestingly, the most recent statue, erected in 1996, depicts and celebrates the life of the black tennis...