THE LAST HOUSE IN FULTON “Some black folks say you’ve got to go back to Africa to find your roots…Anytime I want to feel a little roots, I just walk up the stairs into the room I was born in.” - Spencer Armstead
Spencer Armstead, c. 1970. Photos from www.thenandnowrichmond.com
Spencer Armistead Standing on Old Denny Street. Photo from www.thenandnowrichmond.com.
In this vacant lot, at the former site of 702 Denny Street, stood Spencer Armstead’s house. Along with two flanking houses, at 700 and 704 Denny Street, it was one of the last houses standing in Fulton before the neighborhood was demolished to accommodate the single-family suburban tract houses present today. While the majority of houses and shops in Fulton had been torn down in the 1970s, Armstead formed Together Inc. in an attempt to save the remaining portions of his neighborhood from destruction. As the rest of the buildings in Fulton were sold off to the city and demolished, Armstead increasingly focused his efforts on saving his childhood home. Armstead fought a long and protracted battle with the City of Richmond to keep the house, where both he and his mother Marian were born, from demolition. Despite his efforts, by 1980 he and his mother were the only residents in the area and the three houses on Denny Street stood alone in a field of fallow land slated for redevelopment. The family lost the battle with the city when the house was forcibly taken through eminent domain in 1981 and demolished. They were paid only $6,500 for vacating. The destruction of these three houses signaled the end of the Fulton community.
FULTON
SPENCER ARMSTEAD’S FIGHT TO THE END
Like many others in the congregation of Rising Mount Zion Baptist, Spencer and his mother moved to the East End of Henrico County and began anew in a neighborhood near the new church. Old Nicholson St.
e. urg Av
sb William
Old Denny St.
Admiral Gravely Blvd.
View of Old Denny Street in Fulton, 2011. Photo from Google Maps.
118
119