{"nrhp_refnum":"81000647","name":"Almshouse, The (Additional Documentation)","other_names":["Richmond Nursing Home","See Also:Almshouse, The (Boundary Incr"],"category":"building","location":{"address":"210 Hospital St.","address_restricted":false,"city":"Richmond","county":"Richmond (city and county)","state":"VA","lat":37.55320758200003,"lon":-77.43018254699996,"geom_source":"nps_gis"},"listed_date":"1981-10-29","is_nhl":false,"nhl_designated_date":null,"areas_of_significance":["Military","Health/Medicine","Architecture","Social History"],"significance_levels":["state"],"summary":{"what_it_is":"A three-pavilion Italianate almshouse at 210 Hospital Street in Richmond, Virginia, built in 1860-61 to a design by City Engineer Washington Gill, Jr., later used as the Richmond Nursing Home.","why_significant":"The nomination presents it as a rare Virginia monument to antebellum social reform, built to shelter the city's poor. It served as General Hospital Number One for the Confederacy and as temporary quarters for Virginia Military Institute cadets in 1864-65. Its architecture is described as the most imposing Italianate structure in Richmond.","narrative":"Built in 1860-61 on Hospital Street in Richmond, the Almshouse was designed by City Engineer Washington Gill, Jr., to replace the city's old poorhouse. Its brick front is organized as three three-story pavilions joined by two-story hyphens, with pedimented gables, round-arched windows and iron-columned porches added shortly after the Civil War. Construction paused in 1861 when the building was leased to the Confederacy as General Hospital Number One, which at its peak held more than five hundred soldiers. From December 1864 to April 1865 it also housed Virginia Military Institute cadets. After the war it returned to caring for the city's poor and the sick, later as the Richmond Nursing Home. The rear galleries were replaced in 1953 and interior partitions altered the original plan, though a staircase, mantels and doors survive. The last patients left in 1980, and the building was then unoccupied. It is valued as a Virginia example of antebellum reform, Confederate medical history and Italianate institutional design.","period_of_significance":"1800-1899","architect_builder":"Washington Gill, Jr., Architect","architectural_style":"Italianate","criteria":[],"status_note":"Unoccupied; the last patients were moved out on September 21, 1980, and the form says the building is empty and its survival is questionable unless a use is found.","vacant_flag":true,"machine_generated":true,"model":"claude-sonnet-5-5","prompt_version":"v1.0-2026-10-29","generated_at":"2026-10-29 02:51:57.584532-05","source_pdf":"https://s3.amazonaws.com/NARAprodstorage/opastorage/live/13/6831/41683113/content/electronic-records/rg-079/NPS_VA/81000647.pdf"},"photo":{"url_800":"https://nationalhistoricalregister.com/media/81000647/a2fb63aa03-800.webp","url_1600":"https://nationalhistoricalregister.com/media/81000647/a2fb63aa03-1600.webp","licence":"CC BY 3.0","author":"Morgan Riley","credit_html":"<a href=\"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Old_Almshouse,_Richmond,_Virginia.JPG\" rel=\"noopener\">Morgan Riley</a>, <a href=\"https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0\" rel=\"license noopener\">CC BY 3.0</a>, via Wikimedia Commons","source_page":"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Old_Almshouse,_Richmond,_Virginia.JPG"},"district":{"nrhp_refnum":"100007793","name":"Shockoe Hill Burying Ground Historic District","url":"https://nationalhistoricalregister.com/districts/virginia/shockoe-hill-burying-ground-historic-district-100007793/"},"sources":{"nps_snapshot_date":"2026-05-22","nara_catalog":"https://catalog.archives.gov/id/41683113","wikipedia":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Almshouse_(Richmond,_Virginia)","wikidata":"https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q16159645"},"indexable":true,"url":"https://nationalhistoricalregister.com/virginia/richmond/almshouse-the-additional-documentation-81000647/"}