Editor’s note: Sorry for the delayed edition. I had to travel out-of-state again for another family matter. Thanks for your patience.—Dave.

The East End is home to lots of history, and home to some of the principle members of MapRVA’s ambitious archival-mapping project Yesterdays. Today, The Lookout is launching a new monthly feature to highlight the neighborhood’s rich visual history and the volunteer geospatial enthusiasts working hard to help everybody access and enjoy it. Welcome to The Lookout Lookback!

Here’s how it’ll work. Each month, the Yesterdays team will surface old photos of a building or landmark in the East End from its massive database, which it has built over the course of the past years in connection with archives both local—think The Valentine, Virginia Commonwealth University, etc.—and national. (Users on the free platform have georeferenced over 17,000 such photos to an interactive map of Richmond so far, with thousands in the East End alone. You can, too; check it out here.) Then, our cartographically inclined partners will provide a brief profile of their subject, explaining where it is, why they chose it, and any interesting tidbits about it they turned up in their research. I’ll publish the results here at The Lookout.

For our inaugural outing, we’ve got a classic for you. Here’s your first ever Lookout Lookback, powered by Yesterdays:

What first caught your eye about it? It's a spot that everyone knows well—how many people have had their engagement photos done there? The overlook has been relatively unchanged since before the Civil War, giving us a great string of photographs through time.

What were you most surprised about when comparing the archival photos to the subject in the present day? It's interesting how residential Shockoe Bottom used to be before its tobacco-led industrialization.

More archival photos of the subject from back then:

The subject in the present day:

This has been an installation of The Lookout Lookback, a monthly feature showcasing historic photos snapped here in the East End. Check out Yesterdays and start georeferencing today. And if you have photos you’d like to share with the Yesterdays team for archival consideration (whether of the East End, or any other part of Richmond) fill out this form and they’ll be in touch!

Possum Poetry is original verse written exclusively for The Lookout by Penelope Poubelle, the Lookout’s litter critter-at-large. If you spot roadside trash you’d like her to immortalize in doggerel, email a photo to [email protected]. All submissions anonymous!

On Thursday, the city of Richmond’s Department of Housing and Community Development announced it had selected local developer Historic Housing to build a 190-unit mixed-income apartment building on the lot at 212 North 18th Street. The eight-story project will include a three-story parking deck and five stories of apartments above it, with ~60 of the units earmarked for tenants with household incomes under 80% of the area median, per the department’s press release. In a statement issued by the city, City Council president and longtime 7th District member Cynthia Newbille said, “This development can serve as an anchor for Shockoe, bringing new housing, including affordable housing, economic activity, and long-term investment that strengthens the neighborhood for generations to come.”

Maybe so. But despite the triumphal press release, the deal to green-light the construction is not actually official. “City officials said contract negotiations with Shockoe Shines are still ongoing, and the City Council will also have to approve disposition of the land because the property is publicly owned,” The Richmonder’s housing reporter Sarah Vogelsong noted Thursday. Pshhh. These are mere formalities, Sarah! After all, there are no recent examples of the city announcing a big public-private development project without actually getting all the paperwork signed, only to have it immediately become an embarrassing and costly boondoggle!

At a September 1st community meeting, Department of Parks, Recreation, and Community Facilities (DPR) made an eyebrow-raising claim about where the votes came from in its poll regarding its controversial expansion of Chimborazo Playground’s pétanque courts. “The survey drew substantial participation from throughout the community as well as across the country,” said Nissa Richardson, DPR’s deputy director of capital projects. Despite—or maybe because of—DPR’s insistence that people didn’t have to live in Church Hill to cast votes on the future of its neighborhood park, Richardson’s comment stuck in the craw of many Lookout readers. Ditto, a post on the Facebook page of a pétanque club from Asheville, North Carolina, soliciting votes in favor of maintaining the court expansion here in the East End. But city officials have been unable to provide more information on the supposed influx of far-flung votes Richardson referred to in early September.

“[T]he survey did not capture where respondents lived, however there were comments from some respondents that admitted that they were not from the neighborhood, however the[y] enjoyed the game of pétanque and wanted to see the new courts remain in place,” Tamara Jenkins, the deputy director of public affairs in the Office of Strategic Communications & Civic Engagement, told The Lookout via email in mid-September. In response to a request for clarification about how Richardson quantified “substantial” out-of-town participation, the spokesperson offered to “work on” retrieving “the number of respondents that mentioned in the comments that they did not live in the neighborhood.”

At the end of last month, Jenkins said that she had not been able to obtain this number, and referred me to the survey’s 700+ comments. A cursory review of that archive revealed only a few entries that appear to have been made by non-Richmond residents.

Happenings on The Hill is a digital bulletin board for events, causes, and other items of interest to East Enders that don’t necessarily merit full editorial treatment. Got something for a future edition? Email the relevant details, links, etc. to [email protected] for consideration!

Want to share your Very CHill Photo from the neighborhood? Submit it via this form with your name as you’d like it to appear for publication, and the camera you shot it on.

By submitting, you agree that your photo may be entered into the Creative Commons under a CC-BY license, which assists archivists in creating free, open-source visual records of the neighborhood over time. You will always retain credit as the photographer. Learn more about Creative Commons.