The Sanborn insurance maps are a wonderful resource for researching buildings in Oregon Hill and the City of Richmond. The Sanborn maps were very detailed, showing frame buildings in yellow, brick buildings in red, and stone buildings in blue, with notations of the number of stories and building additions. For example in the detail above we see that the Laurel Street Methodist Church, at the corner of Laurel and Albemarle Streets, was made of brick 28 feet in height to the eaves, had a basement and gas lighting. The Sanborn maps were revised from 1905 through 1925 and the 1905 version is available for free on the Library of Congress web site: http://www.loc.gov/

Photo credit: Library of Congress

A very useful map for anyone studying the history of Oregon Hill and Richmond is the 1876 Beers Atlas. This very detailed atlas identifies the names of the property owners and shows the building footprints. For example, the detail above shows that the Baptist Church in 1876 was on the opposite corner of the 400 block of S. Pine Street, and that the Samuel Parsons House at 601 Spring Street was then known as the Spring Street Home. The Illustrated atlas of the city of Richmond, Va. / by F.W. Beers is available for free on the Library of Congress website (much of Oregon Hill is shown on Section P of the map): http://memory.loc.gov/
Photo credit: Library of Congress

The 1867 Mitchie/Micheler Corps of Engineers map shows the buildings and topography of the entire Richmond area. The attached small detail from the huge map shows a portion of the Oregon Hill neighborhood between the horse-shoe shaped Penitentiary on Spring Street on the right and Hollywood Cemetery on the left. This map shows many homes that were built in Oregon Hill by the Civil War. These houses typically were small workers’ dwellings with gable roofs. Quite a bit of development is shown south of Spring Street, probably because much of this area of the neighborhood was included in the Belvidere estate, which was subdivided around 1817.

Much of the 1867 Mitchie/Micheler map has been placed on the Civil War Richmond website, available for free download:
http://www.mdgorman.com/Maps/1867_engineers_map_of_richmond.htm

Photo credit: Civil War Richmond website (from original map in the National Archives)

At the conclusion of the Civil War, the U.S. military telegraph troops were photographed in Oregon Hill in April 1865 with their covered wagons. The many tents and temporary stables shown near the houses on the 100 block of S. Cherry suggest that these troops were bivouacked in Oregon Hill. The photographs were taken from the vantage point of looking north towards West Cary Street, with the rear of the William Smith House, which has survived at 611 W. Cary Street, shown in the detail. Very high resolution copies of these two photos can be downloaded for free from the Library of Congress website:
http://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/2013647869/
http://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/cwp2003000706/PP/

Photo credits: Library of Congress