Chimborazo Park
| Chimborazo Park | |
|---|---|
|
|
| Type | Public Park |
| Location | 3201 E. Broad Street Richmond Virginia United States |
| Coordinates | 37°31′33″N 77°24′44″W / 37.5257046°N 77.4121019°W |
| Created | 1874 |
|
Oakwood-Chimborazo Historic District
|
|
 |
|
| NRHP Reference # | 04001372 |
| VLR # | 127-0821 |
| Significant dates | |
| Added to NRHP | March 18, 2005 |
| Designated VLR | September 8, 2004 |
Chimborazo Park is a park and historic land site in Richmond, Virginia, United States. Created in 1874, the park was the site of Chimborazo Hospital, one of the world's largest military hospitals.
The name Chimborazo comes from a volcano in Ecuador. It is believed that the Richmond hill was dubbed Chimborazo around 1802, the year of Alexander von Humboldt’s unsuccessful attempt to scale the mountain in Ecuador. Chimborazo Hill was one of Richmond's "seven hills" and thought to have been so named by a local world-traveler because of its topographical likeness to the Ecuadorian volcano. A brewery had dug cellars in the Richmond hill to store beer. At the top of the cellars was a hole that acted as a chimney. A Richmond newspaper reported that any fire in the cellar would cause "billows of smoke [to come] through making the hill look like a miniature Vesuvius."
Shortly after being suggested as the location for the state Capitol building in 1780, the hill (while unclear as to whether it was yet named Chimborazo) was the assemblage place for a "couple of hundred raw, poorly equipped militia, who were hurriedly corralled and drawn up" to protect Richmond when Benedict Arnold and British troops converged on the city in January, 1781. "When the militia saw what was coming, they decided to a man, to live to fight another day, and skedaddled".
Toward the end of the 18th century and beginning of the 19th century, Chimborazo Heights was said to have been a "favorite dueling ground" and "several lives were thus sacrificed there." Before the war, it was "a common, chiefly occupied by grazing cows and ball-playing, kite-flying boys, and not unfrequently the scene of hard-fought rock-battles between the "Hill boys" and the "Buthchertown cats."
Prior to its use as a hospital during the Civil War, the hill had been used to organize the troops coming into Richmond. When the war started, several large regiments camped on and around Chimborazo Hill and built extensive wooden barracks for shelter. As these soldiers went off to the front lines, they left behind as many as 100 nearly-new wooden buildings which were commandeered by Samuel P. Moore, the Surgeon General of the Confederate States of America for the establishment of a hospital. At the time the hospital was established, aside from the barracks constructed by the soldiers, only two buildings were located on the hill: a large house owned by Richard Laughton and a small office building.
...
Wikipedia