With the rise of streetcars in the late 1800s and early 1900s, Richmond’s residential scene changed dramatically. The success of the Ginter Park development in North Side, for example, convinced John Stuart Bryan and Jonathan Bryan, sons of the Richmond Times-Dispatch’s founding publisher, Joseph Bryan, to convert their family’s North Side estate into an idyllic subdivision. With its large, ½-acre lots and extensive landscape plantings, Laburnum Park earned its name. Construction slowed down during World War I, though, and the neighborhood wasn’t built out until the late 1930s. As a result, the architectural styles in Laburnum Park are wide-ranging and include examples of the Tudor and Spanish Colonial revivals as well as Craftsman and Colonial Revival.
