Town of Barton Heights Historic District

Barton Heights is a residential neighborhood in north Richmond, laid out as one of the city's first streetcar suburbs. Growth began after 1890, when the developers built the First Street Viaduct, a steel-frame bridge costing $35,000 that connected downtown to the hilltop lots. Most houses went up in the first quarter of the twentieth century on fifty-foot-wide lots, built speculatively for tradesmen and middle-class professionals. Queen Anne houses with towers, turrets and wraparound porches dominate the early streets, while Colonial Revival houses, bungalows and American Foursquares appeared as the area filled in during the 1920s. A few Italianate and Late Victorian houses remain, along with Colonial Revival apartment buildings and small brick commercial buildings on North Avenue and Roberts Street. The district holds 367 contributing and 138 noncontributing resources. Its houses are larger and more fanciful than those in neighboring districts, and North Avenue carried Richmond's first electric streetcar.