THE TIGER AND THE TORCH ebook

Preface of Built by Blacks:
African American Architecture & Neighborhoods in Richmond
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“This book traces its origins to a visit to the offices of the Alliance to Conserve
Old Richmond Neighborhoods (ACORN)108133 on a rainy Friday afternoon in
late 2002 by two frantic residents of the Manchester area of south Richmond.
The two warned that a small cottage on Commerce Road was scheduled to be
demolished the following Monday. As evidence of the significance of the
structure, they presented a copy of the original deed showing the conveyance of
the house immediately after the Civil War to a black woman, who signed the
document with an “X”.
The ACORN staff felt that the woman, named Emily Winfree, may have once
been a slave. The architecture of the house itself echoed a typical design of a
slave quarters; a single-story frame dwelling of two rooms separated by a
dividing wall and a central chimney serving both rooms. Initial research
revealed that this was the lone surviving structure in what had been a thriving
African American community in lower Manchester. In modern Richmond there
is a scarcity of brick versions of this kind of home, let alone a frame example.
ACORN saw the rescue of the Winfree Cottage as clearly in line with its mission
and as an advocate for old Richmond neighborhoods and took steps to avert
the eminent demolition of the house.
The Richmond Slave Trail Commission assisted in the rescue by arranging to
relocate the house to a vacant lot owned by the city at Seventeenth and Broad
Streets. The crisis having passed, ACORN researchers began to investigate
Winfree and her house. A remarkable story was revealed, opening a window
onto little-known aspects of antebellum cultural history. The cottage did indeed
belong to a former slave and was the sole survivor of the neighborhood she
knew. Her onetime owner and the father of her five children, purchased the
home for her for $800 in 1866. Winfree raised her children in one room of the
tiny house while sometimes renting out the other room to make ends meet.
Researchers discovered Emily Winfree’s prominent gravesite in Maury
Cemetery in south Richmond and her photograph in the collection of the
Library of Virginia. They studied the complicated and interwoven genealogy of
the Winfree families, black and white. In this process of discovery, Winfree’s
story unfolded and became emblematic of the experiences of thousands of
Richmonders who populated the city before and after the Civil War.” 134
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