Built in two phases between 1945 and 1947, Wicker Apartments—known at the time of its listing as Bellevue Apartments—is a well-preserved example in the city of Richmond of a mid-20th-century garden apartment complex. Richmond architect W. Harrison Pringle designed the complex, and Earl H. Wicker, a prolific local contractor and developer whose career spanned more than 50 years, owned and built it under Federal Housing Administration guidelines. Only one of three World War II-era garden apartment complexes remaining in Richmond that FHA funded, it exemplifies the middle-class urban apartment type that FHA encouraged from the 1930s into the immediate post-World War II years to alleviate the nation’s chronic housing shortage. The Wicker Apartments complex embodies the essential principles the FHA espoused, as characterized by tasteful landscaping and open park-like settings, brick construction, generous interior light and ventilation, and low-rise, harmonious buildings without lobbies or elevators.
Many properties listed in the registers are private dwellings and are not open to the public, however many are visible from the public right-of-way. Please be respectful of owner privacy.
Abbreviations:
VLR: Virginia Landmarks Register
NPS: National Park Service
NRHP: National Register of Historic Places
NHL: National Historic Landmark
Programs
DHR has secured permanent legal protection for over 700 historic places - including 15,000 acres of battlefield lands
DHR has erected 2,532 highway markers in every county and city across Virginia
DHR has registered more than 3,317 individual resources and 613 historic districts
DHR has engaged over 450 students in 3 highway marker contests
DHR has stimulated more than $4.2 billion dollars in private investments related to historic tax credit incentives, revitalizing communities of all sizes throughout Virginia