Monument Avenue

Blog overview

If Richmond represented the historic heart of the Confederacy, then Monument Avenue was meant to memorialize its soul. Almost from the moment they were erected, the monuments to Confederate heroes attracted controversy and protest. This reached a climax in the summer of 2020 when Black Lives Matter protesters, outraged by the death of George Floyd, converged on the avenue to vent their fury. On July 10th, Jefferson Davis’s statue was dragged from its pedestal. Two days later, photographer Brian Rose packed up his cameras in New York and drove back to his home state to document the last days of the grand boulevard of the Lost Cause.

Empty Pedestals

By Brian Rose

April 21, 2022

Not long after I photographed Monument Avenue, the city announced that it was taking down all of the Confederate memorials, and in November of 2020 I returned to Monument Avenue to photograph the empty pedestals. The Jefferson Davis pavilion remained intact, but Vindicatrix was no longer perched on her slender column, Maury and his globe …...

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Rumors of War

By Brian Rose

April 14, 2022

A few nights before I arrived in Richmond, protesters set fire to the headquarters of the United Daughters of the Confederacy (UDC), just a few blocks off Monument Avenue. No other organization was more responsible for the placement of Confederate monuments in Richmond and elsewhere in the south than the UDC. Women were the leaders …...

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Pathfinder of the Seas and a Tennis Champion

By Brian Rose

April 7, 2022

The most prominent statues along Monument Avenue depicted Confederate generals on horseback, heroic battlefield leaders, perched on pedestals high above the heads of onlookers. An exception was the memorial to Matthew Fontaine Maury, a naval officer, who was nicknamed Pathfinder of the Seas. He charted the world’s oceans, and his profile of the Atlantic seabed …...

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Goddess of Vindication

By Brian Rose

March 31, 2022

Monument Avenue was built as an extension of the city of Richmond in the late 19th century, and like many such projects, was at heart a real estate venture. But it was also an expression of the city beautiful movement inspired by European architecture, and echoed similar planning schemes like Benjamin Franklin Parkway in Philadelphia, …...

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Grand Boulevard of the Lost Cause

By Brian Rose

March 24, 2022

The first wave of the Covid-19 pandemic crested in New York in the spring of 2020 when the eerie calm of the lockdown was broken by the news of the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis. Protesters flooded into the streets across the country demanding justice under the slogan “Black Lives Matter.” I followed …...

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