In the late 1930s the Home Owners’ Loan Corporation (HOLC), a New Deal agency created to refinance homes and prevent foreclosures, surveyed real estate trends in the nation’s largest cities. Redlining Richmond focuses on the assessment surveys and the map produced for Richmond, Virginia. It has been developed to allow visitors to explore the information collected and produced by the HOLC and its local agents, comparing and contrasting that evidence both spatially on maps and as lists. Running throughout the assessment surveys collected by the HOLC is the issue of race, and this site allows you to investigate the centrality of race in the politics and on the landscape of Richmond in the late 1930s.
"Redlining Richmond" is the product of the collaborative efforts of many at the Digital Scholarship Lab and theUniversity of Richmond more generally. Individuals who have contributed to this project include:
- Robert K. Nelson, director of the Digital Scholarship Lab, wrote the introduction, programmed the site, and led overall development of the project.
- Kathleen Smith, research intern at the Digital Scholarship Lab, helped conceptualize the project and the site and developed the project's database.
- Scott Nesbit, associate director of the Digital Scholarship Lab, contributed GIS expertise to the project.
- Nate Ayers, programmer/analyst at the Digital Scholarship Lab, designed the site and all of its images.
- John V. Moeser, senior fellow at the Bonner Center for Civic Engagement, brought the HOLC assessment surveys and security map for Richmond to our attention and lent the DSL his expertise in the history of twentieth-century Richmond.
- Moeser's former graduate student Mike Sarahan originally visited the National Archives to gather the surveys and the map for Richmond.