WTVR reporter Mark Holmberg did a nice little piece on the Tredegar Street rope swing. Here’s how it begins:

It’s just a missing rope swing. One that goes missing from time to time.
And yet, it’s an identifiable part of the cityscape, a Richmond tradition, if you will, every bit as evocative as the smell of Shockoe Bottom or the vista atop Sunset Hill where Grace Street surrenders for a clifflike block.
At least two generations and mayhaps more have loved this rope swing hanging high from the railroad trestle between Brown and Belle islands on historic Tredegar Street. It’s about 40 feet above the mighty James River, which offers a mostly friendly little eddy – with a deluxe sandy bottom – to embrace the tens of thousands of laughing, splashing swingers.

He goes on to say that although no one admits to cutting down the swing, it does happen from time to time and then returns.