Grace Street Commercial Historic District

Grace Street Commercial Historic District covers nine blocks of downtown Richmond, running along Grace and Franklin Streets with a few buildings on Broad Street. Until about 1920 the area was one of the city's most fashionable residential neighborhoods, lined with mansions, row houses and several churches. Beginning with the Thalhimer Brothers office building in 1911, and accelerating through the 1920s, it turned into a retail and office center that was nicknamed "Richmond's Fifth Avenue." More than seventy shops and office buildings went up between 1920 and 1930, before the 1929 crash slowed construction. The district includes department stores such as Miller & Rhoads and Thalhimers, the Loew's Theater, and an eleven-story Art Deco telephone company building. Its buildings use Italian Renaissance, Spanish Revival, Georgian Revival, Art Deco and Moderne designs in brick, limestone and terra cotta. A handful of earlier residential and church remnants survive. The district contains 74 contributing and 15 noncontributing buildings and keeps much of its early twentieth century character.