Miss Boyd and The Salvation Army Hall

There was recently an estate sale for The Oaks, a house in Windsor Farms…

From the sale description:

The Oaks, one of Richmond’s most historic and unique homes, was built in Amelia County around 1745. It took English craftsmen and native labor three years to construct. All of the bricks were handmade on the property. The wood was cut on the estate and allowed to season for a year before construction began. This remarkable architectural gem might not have survived to the present day had it not been for the vision and determination of Richmonder Lizzie Edmunds Boyd, who had the house moved to Richmond’s Windsor Farms in 1927 by train. Its faithfulness to the original structure is testimony to the care with which it was taken down and reconstructed. Miss Boyd was far ahead of her time as a preservationist, a community activist and philanthropist, as well as a serious collector of early furniture. While she was sponsoring Richmond’s first soup kitchen on Oregon Hill and helping found the Community Foundation, she found time to fill The Oaks with a notable collection of early American and English antiques.

It sounds like this soup kitchen may have been based in the building that appears in a Times Dispatch photograph (click here for link to RTD archives blog).

Reverend Abbott Bailey at St. Andrew’s Church was able to find out more from one of the church elders, Cyrus Field… “It was located at Maiden Lane and Belvidere Sts. This was beside St Andrews Mission, which was [the church’s] original Parish House, moved from the Baldwin Hall Location.” It was directly opposite of the house his wife Ellen grew up in.”

Neighbor Charles Pool located what he believes is the building on the 1905 Sanborn map:

location of Salvation Army -1905 Sanborn map

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