The building at the corner of Robin Hood and Hermitage looks like the dictionary definition of “ramshackle.” Boarded up, with graffiti marking one side, the boxy structure has vines growing throughout its gutters and parts of its roof have sunk in. Marked with a no trespassing sign, surrounded by a chain link fence, this place has clearly been abandoned.

Welcome to the former Westham train station, built in 1911. Modest and rundown as it is, this undistinguished structure has fulfilled two important purposes during its existence: First as a Henrico rail outpost near the C&O tracks adjacent to the Huguenot Bridge—the gateway for generations of University of Richmond students—and then, starting in 1963, as the centerpiece of a Richmond welcome center that greeted visitors just off the interstate. When the downtown Convention Center opened in 2002, the station house was shuttered and abandoned, left to deteriorate.

“I call it demolition by neglect,” says historian Selden Richardson. “This is an architectural form that is disappearing from the country. In many places, they really cherish these little buildings. They utilize them and celebrate them and it bothers me that we don’t have enough sense to do that. For all intents and purposes, it looks like it was parked there like you’d abandon a car.”

Richardson, the author of “Built By Blacks” and other books of Richmond history, has been a lonely warrior in his quest to save this forgotten piece of history. He has written letters to the mayor, argued before city council, and petitioned the city’s Economic Development Authority (EDA), which inherited the building when the city conveyed the underlying land to accommodate the impending Diamond District Redevelopment Project. He’s even reached out to Henrico officials to see if they would move the building to the county’s RF&P Park, which already celebrates locomotive history with four restored train cars on site. The Westham, Richardson reminds, was originally located in the county.

Richardson is no Johnny Come Lately to this—eight years ago, he wrote an editorial for Style Weekly headlined “We Should Save the City-Owned Westham Station From Negligence.”

“The building was once part of the great American transportation system,” he says. “Each little node was an important part of the community. This is where people commuted into Richmond for 50 years, the entryway for those who couldn’t or wouldn’t go to a big station in downtown Richmond.”

One entity that has been listening to Richardson is Preservation Virginia, which fosters and supports the state’s historic spaces. It’s largely thanks to the historian’s dogged advocacy that the Westham train station will be placed on the nonprofit’s list of Most Endangered Historic Sites in Virginia, which is to be published later this month.

“The building is pretty modest in size,” says Logan Parham, Preservation Virginia’s field services manager. “But in light of that, it served generations of people in two different locations. First in Huguenot, and then as part of a community park where it became the gateway to Richmond coming from the D.C. area on the northern side of town. It’s a bright memory in most people’s minds, especially older folks. For so many years, it was a place to work, to congregate, and socialize.” (There is one other Richmond area site on the upcoming endangered list, he reveals: The Granite Industrial Building on the Southside, also owned by the city, is similarly threatened by severe neglect.)

Parham says that an effort to save the Westham building would signal that the city actually cares about its shared spaces.

“The neighborhoods that surround the building, particularly Scott’s Addition, have grown up so fast in the last five to ten years that a lot of the historic fabric is lost, other than a few adaptive reuse projects. It’s almost absent. So I see this as an opportunity and a relatively low cost one given the size of the building.”

For Richardson, it’s déjà vu all over again. For years, he urged the city to save the dilapidated Leigh Street Armory, a much bigger structure that didn’t even have a roof. They listened, and that building is today the site of the successful Black History Museum and Cultural Center. The historian admits to having “leftover feelings” from the 20 years he went down and “turned bright red at the podium at city council meetings, accusing them of being everything but a child of God.”

“It’s really an EDA [Economic Development Authority] question,” says Katherine Jordan, the city councilperson whose 2nd district lays claim to the station house. “I’ve reached out to the developer and they are not interested in it. Where it’s located right now, within the Diamond District, there’s nothing slated to happen to that parcel within four years. There’s nothing imminent.”

Matthew Welch, the acting director of the EDA, confirms this. “The site is not part of the current development phase,” he says in an email reply. “[It] will not be sold to Diamond District Partners for development for a few more years.”

Kimberly Chen, senior manager in the office of Historic Preservation, says in an email that the arguments for saving the building are complicated by its checkered past.

“The station lost context and integrity when it was moved in the 1960s and it has lost further integrity over the years through adaptations for different uses,” she says. Jordan adds that, at one point, much of the station was rebuilt following a fire. Because of that, historic grants or tax credits to rehab would be hard to come by.

Henrico has been asking about the building—not to claim it but to document it. The city is currently working with the county’s Recreation and Parks department, specifically its History, Heritage and Natural Resources division, to take extensive photos of the station.

“We are pursuing the photo documentation of the building as per our guidelines of historic preservation,” says Division Director Julian Charity in an email. “We do not have any photos of the building from its original location in Henrico County, and do not have photos of its move to Robin Hood Road. We would like to see if any original fabric of the building remains from its first life as a train station, and share our findings with the Virginia Department of Historic Resources. ”

The best case outcome for Westham, Jordan says, is for a wealthy train enthusiast to take it off the city’s hands. “I would love for someone who is enthusiastic and has the means to get it off the site, to put an offer into the city. I’m talking about people who love trains, people who love regional history and people who have means to get it off the property. Because it’s not an insignificant task to move it.”

“If your story spurs interest from an individual/entity that wants to create a new chapter for the building,” Welch echoes, “then they should reach out with their plan for how they’d relocate it. The EDA would certainly be willing to work with them to transfer ownership of the building and to provide them access to the site to relocate.”

Richardson finds this solution unacceptable, even laughable.

“Unless somebody picks up the phone and does something,” he says, “wishing for imaginary heroes is a useless exercise. It certainly indicates a lack of imagination or vision, doesn’t it? We’ll just imagine a benefactor appearing in a puff of smoke. I bet they have the arrival of an imaginary hero as the solution for a lot of our difficulties.”