English Village

Tucked into the 3400 block of Grove Avenue in Richmond’s Museum District, English Village is one of the city’s most distinctive historic communities — a 1920s Tudor Revival cooperative of seventeen attached dwellings arranged in a U around a central courtyard.

Designed by Richmond architect Bascom J. Rowlett and completed in 1927, the Village was an imaginative departure from the apartment blocks and rowhouses of its era: low, picturesque buildings of brick, half-timbering, and tall ornamental chimneys, planned around shared green space. It was among the first cooperative housing ventures in Richmond — a precursor of the modern condominium — and it is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

Nearly a century later, English Village remains what it was designed to be: a quiet, garden-like enclave minutes from the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Carytown, and downtown Richmond. Original corporation by-laws still protect the exteriors, so the Village you see today is remarkably close to the one Rowlett envisioned.

Use this site to explore the community’s history, its architecture, and the homes themselves — or learn what’s involved in purchasing a unit here.