Inside the 28-room Richmond home of the first Black woman to charter a bank in the United States

She’s still Jackson Ward’s greatest story

You can walk through the front door of Maggie Lena Walker’s home in Richmond and see her furniture, her books, even the wheelchair she used to keep working when her legs gave out.

This 28-room house sits in Jackson Ward, one of the largest African American historic districts in the country, and it tells the story of the first Black woman to charter a bank in the United States. The house is just the beginning.

The whole neighborhood around it runs deep.

Born to an enslaved mother in 1864 Richmond

Maggie Lena Walker came into the world on July 15, 1864, right here in Richmond. Her mother, Elizabeth Draper, had been enslaved.

As a teenager, Walker joined the Independent Order of St. Luke, a fraternal group that gave African Americans access to financial help, education and healthcare.

By 1899, she ran the whole organization as Right Worthy Grand Secretary. She held that title until her death.

Under her watch, the Order grew to tens of thousands of members across multiple states.

A newspaper in 1902 and a bank by 1903

Walker didn’t stop at running one organization. In 1902, she founded the St. Luke Herald, a newspaper that gave the community its own voice.

The next year, she chartered the St. Luke Penny Savings Bank, making her the first Black woman in the country to start and lead a bank.

She kept that pace for decades, building institutions while other people talked about what couldn’t be done. The National Park Service took over her home as a National Historic Site in 1978.

The house grew from nine rooms to 28

Walker bought the house at 110½ East Leigh Street in 1904 for $4,800, with only her name on the deed.

George Boyd, an African American builder, had put it up in 1883 in the Italianate style, and it started with about nine rooms. Over 20 years, Walker expanded it to 28 rooms to fit her multigenerational family.

The biggest change came in 1922 when Charles T. Russell, one of Virginia’s first licensed Black architects, added the columned front porch, a second-story balcony and new bedrooms.

Her wheelchair had a writing desk attached

Step inside and you’re looking at the 1930s. Walker’s original furniture, artwork and personal items fill every room.

A baby grand piano sits in the parlor where her children and grandchildren took music lessons. The library holds her own bookcases, diplomas and portraits of prominent African Americans she knew.

After diabetes took her ability to walk in 1928, she kept going. A reproduction of her custom wheelchair with a detachable writing desk shows exactly how.

A rope-and-pulley elevator got her between floors.

Rangers walk you through every room for 40 minutes

Your visit starts at the visitor center at 600 N. 2nd Street with a 20-minute film called “Carry On” about Walker’s life. After that, a Park Service ranger walks you through the home for about 40 minutes.

Tours run first-come, first-served with a cap of 10 people, so you won’t feel crowded. Groups of 10 or more can reserve ahead.

The visitor center itself spreads across five adjacent historic buildings with exhibits, an auditorium and a bookstore.

She shut down a streetcar company 50 years before Rosa Parks

Walker’s reach went far past banking. She co-founded the Richmond chapter of the NAACP and held leadership roles in the National Association of Colored Women and the Virginia Interracial Commission.

In 1904, she helped organize a boycott of Richmond’s segregated streetcars. The protest hit so hard that the streetcar company went out of business within the year.

That was roughly 50 years before the Montgomery Bus Boycott made national headlines.

Doctors, lawyers and bankers all lived on Quality Row

Walker’s block on East Leigh Street went by the name “Quality Row.” African American doctors, lawyers, ministers and bankers all lived within steps of each other.

The wider neighborhood, Jackson Ward, earned the nickname “Harlem of the South” for its thriving Black culture in the early 1900s.

People also called it “Black Wall Street” because of all the Black-owned businesses, banks and insurance companies packed into the district.

Between 1889 and 1929, six chartered African American-owned banks operated here.

Richmond put up its first statue of a woman for her

A 10-foot bronze figure of Maggie Walker stands at Broad and Adams streets, right at the edge of Jackson Ward. Sculptor Toby Mendez shaped her at the height of her career, around age 45 to 50.

The city unveiled it on July 15, 2017, Walker’s birthday, and it became Richmond’s first monument on a city street dedicated to a woman.

Ten black granite benches circle the statue, each one carved with dates and milestones from her life. The plaza now marks the entrance into the neighborhood she built.

Bojangles Robinson dances at the corner where he paid for a traffic light

Walk a few blocks and you’ll find the statue of Bill “Bojangles” Robinson at Adams and Leigh streets. Robinson grew up right here in Jackson Ward, born in 1878, and became one of the biggest entertainers of his era.

The aluminum sculpture by John Temple Witt shows him dancing down a flight of stairs, a tribute to his famous stair dance.

The city put it up in 1973 at the exact intersection where Robinson once paid out of his own pocket to install a traffic light to protect local schoolchildren.

Ella Fitzgerald and Duke Ellington played “The Deuce”

The Hippodrome Theater on North Second Street opened around 1914 as a vaudeville and movie house.

Locals called the strip “The Deuce,” and during its peak from the 1920s through the 1940s, Ella Fitzgerald, Duke Ellington, Cab Calloway and James Brown all took the stage.

A fire hit the building in 1945, and it came back in 1947 rebuilt in Art Deco style. Today, the restored Hippodrome runs live events, keeping the same stretch of pavement loud after more than a century.

The oldest surviving Black militia armory is now a museum

A few blocks from Walker’s home at 122 West Leigh Street, the Black History Museum and Cultural Center of Virginia fills the old Leigh Street Armory.

The city built it in 1895 for the First Battalion Virginia Volunteers, an African American militia, and it’s believed to be the oldest surviving armory for a Black militia in the country.

After decades of neglect, the building reopened as a museum in 2016. Galleries walk you through Emancipation, Reconstruction, Jim Crow and the Civil Rights Movement.

The cast iron on the buildings tells its own story

You can explore Jackson Ward on your own with a self-guided audio walking tour from the National Park Service.

The route connects sites tied to Walker and other notable residents across one of the largest collections of historic structures linked to African American history in the country. Keep your eyes on the buildings themselves.

The district is known for its cast iron architectural details on homes and storefronts throughout.

Every first full weekend in October, the 2nd Street Festival draws tens of thousands for live music, food and walking tours.

Explore the Maggie L. Walker National Historic Site in Virginia

You can visit Walker’s home and the surrounding neighborhood on foot in a single afternoon. The visitor center sits at 600 N. 2nd Street in Richmond, and the Walker home is at 110½ E. Leigh Street.

The National Park Service runs the site, so check the official website before you go for current tour schedules and times.

The Maggie Walker statue, Bojangles Robinson statue, Black History Museum and Hippodrome Theater are all within walking distance.

This article was created with AI assistance and human editing.

Read more from this brand:

• The Freed Slave Who Became One of America’s First Black Slave Owners
• Forgotten Slaves Are Getting Sidewalk Memorials in This Virginia County
• An SR-71 Blackbird circled America twice nonstop—now it hangs in a Virginia museum